#Bloomscrolling through the pandemic, one blossom at a time

Are you a flower nerd? Do you sometimes post blossom pictures to Twitter? Maybe you used the hashtag #Bloomscrolling? Well, that’s mine. Yep, I invented it (or so I’m told). And no, you can’t have my autograph. Back in August — during the dark COVID days when the presidential primaries were still sucking the life out of me and the CZU Lightning Fire was about to blacken 85,000 acres of the Santa Cruz Mountains — the trending hashtag of the time was #Doomscrolling.

And Lord knows, I was plenty guilty of that. Scrolling my Twitter timeline, I was like one of the Four iphone Horsemen of the Apocalypse, riding with endless woe.

But then I saw it: A herd of blooming agapanthuses marching down to the San Mateo coastline, looking for all the world like lemmings about to hurl themselves into the sea. I mean, it was 2020. Who could blame them?

They were gorgeous and full of selfie-snapping people Instagram-gorging themselves

I’ve driven that coastline for years and never once noticed these button-downed, boring, suburban, blue/white garden staples, now apparently gone feral, throwing a rave down by the Pacific.

It took a couple weeks, but I finally Tweeted pictures out with the caption, “Time for #Bloomscrolling. My contribution: Agapanthus sunset, Montara State Beach.”

It didn’t exactly trend, as most of my Tweets are wont not to do. In fact, nobody used it for three months.

Then in January, a Dr. Minx Marple used it, and bless ’em, some hashtag research was offered up:

@Minxmarple

“Jan 12bc citation politics: Earliest example of #Bloomscrolling I can find is from @karlmondon on 8th August 2020, and then by @nath1as on 3rd Nov, and the term seemed to take off at US election time when used by @yungcontent with 17k followers... so thanks to them, really.”

Thank you, Dr. Marple for crowning me the #Bsoriginator. My work here is done.