Every year the sudden proliferation of buttercups heralds the coming of summer, and every year I’m seized by some weird artist-hoarder’s compulsion to harvest them all, as if I could somehow capture this time, this feeling; this strange, rich light that pours down on the world like honey. Irish summers are so fleeting. I thought maybe I could use the flowers somehow – perhaps draw with the pollen like yellow chalk, or just make some kind of installation. 

This year I actually gave in to that vague, futile impulse and went and sat in a field for hours, patiently decapitating buttercups, and adding them to a little pile that never really seemed to get any bigger. I carried them inside in a cardboard box and they have just been quietly wilting under the stairs for over a month now. 

I don’t know what the moral of this story is.