Fine line botanical tattoo of a dandelion seed head and orange bloom with green stems and leaves, placed on a shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dandelion sprig on a shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a small dandelion sprig with a pale lavender-grey seed head, an orange flower and a few loose seeds drifting above it. Green stems and serrated leaves complete the design. The linework is very fine, with soft, stippled shading in the seed head and light colour washes on the petals. The sprig sits off-centre on the upper back and shoulder, with a black bra strap and dark background framing the skin.

Fine line Botanical Shoulder Dandelion Seed head Flower Stem Leaf Seed

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The portcullis has finally gone the way of the rest of Harrowgate, which is to say it is lying in the moat with the ducks sitting on it. I have been up on the south wall all morning with the rope and Mr Abernethy's ladder, trying to get the last of the wild dandelions out of the lead gutters before the surveyors come on Thursday. They will not come out. I have pulled at them since eight. Every one that gives, another two appear beside it, and by noon the seed heads were breaking apart in the wind and filling the air over the inner ward like a bad snow.

Mrs Pryce says that is the castle's way of counting its visitors. I said it is the castle's way of being untidy, and she told me to mind my tongue, which I did, mostly.

Here is the thing I meant to write. In the bailey, under the arch where the old kitchen used to be, there is one plant that has come up through the cracked flags: a sprig with a grey puff at the top, a single orange flower beside it, and a few seeds lifting off as though they have somewhere better to be. I did not pull it. I sat on the step beside it for ten minutes eating my bread and cheese and thinking about how you used to blow them at me on the Sunday walk to church, and how you always said a wish only counts if you don't tell anyone what it was.

I am telling you, which I suppose means it will not come true. Come up at Easter. Bring the blue cardigan. The wind on that wall is no kinder than it was, but the view over the valley is the same, and so, I think, is the one small dandelion that has decided this ruin is home.

Yours, as ever, Ada