Botanical neo-trad tattoo of anemones, peonies and foliage covering the upper arm and shoulder, shaded in grey with muted pink and green colour.

Anemone and peony bouquet on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large bouquet of white anemones, pink peony buds and blooms, berry sprigs and green leaves fills the upper arm and reaches onto the shoulder. The flowers use dark outlines with grey shading and soft pink and olive green fills, while the foliage is layered with darker shading for depth. The design is arranged as a dense, upward-sweeping composition that wraps around the curve of the arm.

Botanical Neo-trad Upper arm Shoulder Anemone Peony Bouquet Flower Leaves Berry Bud Foliage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The anemones came up first that spring, the way Nan said they would, pushing through the grit at the bottom of the garden where the slag heap leaned over the fence. Nobody on Colliery Row grew anything but cabbage, but Nan had never cared what the row thought. She gave me a fistful of bulbs wrapped in newspaper and told me to dig them in before the shift whistle, because the men would walk past at six and she wanted them to see something other than black.

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The peonies were harder. They sulked for two years, and I almost gave up on them, until the August Nan's hands got too bad for the trowel and I went out in the rain to cut the buds myself. Pink as the inside of a shell, tight as fists. I carried them to the kitchen table where she sat with the flower show schedule, and she made me arrange them the way the old men arranged their pigeons, sweeping upward, leaves dark underneath, the white anemones with their black middles set in the centre like a pair of eyes that wouldn't close.

We took it to the institute hall on the Saturday. The judges gave us a rosette for cottage gardens, but what I remember is the pit deputy stopping at our table with his cap in his hands and his face gone soft, asking whose work it was. Nan didn't answer. She nodded at me, and I told him it was ours.

On the Monday I cut the last peony before the frost and walked it up to the pit head, where the night shift stood smoking by the cage. I left it propped in an empty jam jar on the rail. By dinnertime it had gone, and nobody ever told me who took it, which was exactly right.