My mind whirs around a million miles a minute. I’m that girl, scrolling through her feeds, liberally liking and commenting and posting pictures of her day. When I finally slow down to read a magazine, some tidbit in the story shoots me off on a research tangent, or gorgeous photo has to be bookmarked into My Garden One Day file. All my favorite Instagram accounts are pure floral obsessions and I fill my mornings in other people’s gardens.

The advice “F8 and Be There”, coined in the 60s probably by Weegee, still holds true. Sure there’s the craft of photography and knowing your camera settings, but no matter how beautiful the landscape, if you weren’t out in it, you missed the opportunity. Likewise if you don’t have your camera, any camera, the scene is gone in an instant. That’s why I love having my smartphone. Sure I carry my “good” camera on every garden tour, but it takes time to unload and tag and sort and file each image. A task I often avoid. It’s just so easy to snap a picture, take a note, capture an idea, and share that tip as soon as it occurs to you.

When I sit down to write an article, I scan through last week’s photos, compose a story, research the topic, squirrel off into yet another tangent, see if I can find last year’s pictures. My writing process is agonizing and full of distractions. The week passes, then another, and that flower is no longer in bloom (I’m talking about you, Rhododendron-I-still-can’t identify)

And so the moment is gone, trying to tell a better story or teach a new thing. The immediacy of the smartphone photo is so freeing. With a few image edits, the tiniest of captions is all it takes to share that moment. A few sardonic hashtags usually pointing out my dorky tendencies, and I can release whatever wild and wonderful gardening observation into my universe.

And such a universe I live in! With so many things in the world to worry about, by curating the accounts I follow I’m immersed in nothing but plants. I have found my tribe, my fellow gardeners from Sweden (#trädgård), my Danish container gardeners (#krukker), my fellow backyard horticulturists #mygardentoday, my vegetable plotters #allotmentgarden, my local obsessive plant nerds (#plantgeeks), and all the garden centers posting what’s new in the shop, adding to my ever growing #plantlustlist. A world of planty goodness connecting me across the world, with the swipe of a thumb.

It’s why I am a garden communicator, an obsessed plant geek, a visual storyteller. I’m that person for whom the Instant in Instagram was made.