Black and grey botanical tattoo of a dahlia and a peony with leaves and buds, running up the outer forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dahlia and peony tattoo on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A dahlia and a peony with shaded leaves and a small bud run up the outer forearm of a person with a light grey top and dark trousers. The linework is fine and the petals are built up with soft grey shading, with a few faint warm tones in the peony. The arm fills the left and centre of the frame, with a blurred indoor background and a ring visible on the hand at the bottom.

Botanical Realism Forearm Dahlia Peony Flower Leaves Bud Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marian,

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The dahlias came up out of the ground on Tuesday looking like something the sea had left behind, knobbed and grey and furious with mud. Mr Tulloch from the boat says we will have a frost before the full moon, so I have been on my knees in the top bed since six, lifting tubers and wrapping them in old newspaper from the mainland. You would laugh at me. Half the island thinks I am mad to bother with flowers on a rock where the wind takes the washing off the line.

The peony by the wall is the one I worry about. Father planted it the year you were born and it has never once flowered on time, always sulking until June when everyone else has given up on it. This year it gave me four heads, pale as cream and spilling over the stones, and I cut the best of them for the church. Ada Brodie said they looked like a bride who had overslept. I told her a bride who had overslept was the only sort worth having.

The bud on the lower stem never opened. I kept meaning to snip it, then forgot, and now it has gone brown at the edges and hangs there like a question. I think I will leave it. The leaves are still dark and glossy enough to catch the light off the harbour, and the dahlia beside it is putting on one last show, all those layered petals going rusty at their tips.

Come in October if you can. Bring the good secateurs, the ones you borrowed in 1998 and never gave back. We will split the tubers together and you can tell me what the mainland has done to the price of coal. I have saved you the biggest one, wrapped and labelled in my worst handwriting.

Your loving sister, Nell