The magic of nature!

 Days like yesterday working away tidying trees at the orchard with the Sun shining is heaven.

And its a great workout too pulling all the weeds away and shovelling mulch, you can make it as intense as you want, I must have down a few hundred body weight squats I was up and down that much.

And at the end of it you got the satisfaction of seeing your phantom planted fruit trees looking all Ladida!

Every nice sunny day thats where I'll be, working away in the orchard, I love it!

Some lady said passing by yesterday, your not working on Easter Sunday?

I said this isn't work this is my passion and told her these are all fruit trees, she couldn't believe it!

We have around 300 fruit trees at the phantom planters HQ with some getting really big too.

Every year I go around everyone one of them giving them a check over and tidying them.

It's amazing what you learn when you get so intimate with nature like this, I believe a tree feels your presence and love that your giving it, I've seen weird and wonderful things happen down there with the trees.

We have 2 trees at the orchard, one died last year really freakishly and the other is riddled with a disease called canker.

Both these trees I'll never forget planting them and the people who I assisted in planting them.

One of them couldn't have give a damn about nature and was just doing it for the image and the tree just seemed to die overnight! 

And the other person I was trying to make peace with and they were having none of it.

I had a fall out with an ecologist of all people and I said to them lets go and plant a tree together and make peace between us.

I really rubbed this person up the wrong way and they were full of venom towards me.

They half heartily agreed to my peace offering and on the day of planting I could still sense the venom towards me, there was not a nice energy.

This apple tree we planted a couple of years ago has been slowly dying since then, it has just rotted away and it needs pulled out and replaced.

It's so strange, no other tree is like it and I believe this venom and negative energy has went into the tree.

I have also seen a young lad land up with a potted apple tree in peak summer which was not that well rooted and the soil was falling everywhere off the roots.

The tree was not sturdy at all, it was not one I would have planted myself and certainly not phantom planted in the wild.

But this young lad lands up with his apple tree that day and says to me can I plant this in memory of my Granny in the orchard?

I said no probs and we got digging, during the planting I said to him, now dont be worrying if the tree doesn't make it kid, this tree really needs to stay in the pot for another year or so or be planted in winter when dormant.

He was adamant it was his Grannies tree and that it will be sweet he said, he was so positive about it.

To be honest I had not much faith in this tree surviving, the way we planted it every tree expert out there will tell you it will die.

It was all wobbly and couldn't even stay up straight, all the soil just fell away from the roots when we took it out of the pot, this normally causes a type of shock in the peak growing season and we did our best to keep it upright with bamboo sticks.

3 years later this young lads apple tree is thriving and I believe it was his energy, belief and love that went into this tree as to why it has survived.

I've seen all sorts of magic happen at the phantom planters HQ....

#phantomplanter #phantomplanters #communityspirit 

I challenge you to phantom plant a tree.