Black and grey botanical tattoo of two peony flowers with leaves and a small bee, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black and grey peonies with a bee on upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Two peony blooms with layered petals and shaded centres sit among leaves and buds, with a small bee above them. The linework is fine and the petals are built up with smooth grey shading. The tattoo is in black and grey only, and the flowers fill the lower half of the frame against a soft, blurred background.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Peony Flower Leaves Bee Bud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bee came in on the coat of a surveyor who had walked eleven miles from Hebden to get a room, and by the second night it had made itself at home in the sugar bowl on the parlour windowsill as though it had paid for the place. Nobody had the heart to shoo it out. The lane had been shut since Tuesday, the plough had given up at the top of the hill, and in a house full of stranded travellers a bit of June was welcome.

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I kept it alive with syrup on a teaspoon, the way Nan used to feed the sickly hives at Cragg Farm. She grew peonies along the south wall there, great blousy heads the size of a child's fist that the bees drowned in every June, and she always said you could tell a good bloom by the number of visitors it kept busy. The surveyor, who was called Dennis and had opinions about damp, watched me dribbling syrup onto the saucer and asked if I was going to name it. I said it had already got a name, and that it was Nan's, and he had the good sense to leave it there.

On the third morning the bee walked up the glass where the frost had grown into ferns, cleaned its face with both front legs, and buzzed against the pane as if it had a train to catch. I eased the sash up. The cold came in like a slap and the bee sat on the sill for a long moment, then dropped into the white air and went over the drift towards the walled garden at the back.

I followed with a trowel and a bundle of bamboo canes, because the peony roots would be asleep under a foot of snow and I wanted to find the bed in April. I pushed the first cane into the frozen earth where I was sure the old stalks stood. The bee came back, landed on my knuckle, and stayed there while I drove in the second cane, as if it was checking my work. Then it lifted off towards the wall, as if it had an appointment in June.