Black line tattoo of a wild rose, lavender sprigs, a strawberry and serrated leaves in a botanical bouquet on the inner forearm.

Flower and lavender bouquet on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large open flower with a visible centre sits at the middle of a botanical bouquet, surrounded by lavender sprigs, serrated leaves, a small strawberry and a closed bud. The design is drawn in black outline with light shading inside the petals and leaves, and there is no colour ink. The bouquet is centred on the inner forearm against a plain pale background, with the subject's upper body and clothing partly visible at the right.

Botanical Fine line Forearm Flower Rose Lavender Strawberry Leaves Bud Bouquet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hester,

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I have pressed the wild rose you sent me between two pages of the Gazetteer, the one with the broken spine, and it has come out the colour of weak tea, which you will say serves me right for reading in the bath. The hedge behind the old lock-keeper's cottage is in full flower now. The dog roses have opened all at once, pale and flat-faced, and the bees are drunk on them by eleven in the morning.

I went up to the top field on Tuesday with a basket and a pair of shears that belonged to my father, meaning to cut lavender for the linen press. The bushes had gone grey and leggy since May, and someone, probably the Pryce boys, had pulled up the strawberry runners along the wall. I found one fruit still hanging, small and hard as a marble, so I left it for the wren. The closed bud I took home, because it seemed a shame to leave it on its stalk with nobody to watch it open.

I am writing because Mr Ambrose came by the gate yesterday asking whether the Lockwood estate would sell the hedgerow. I told him the land belonged to no one who would answer him, which is true enough. Then I went indoors and tied the lavender and the rose and the little green bud together with twine, and I stood it in the blue jug on the sill where the light falls at four. It is not much of a bouquet. It is the only thing in this house that has not been argued over.

Write back soon, and tell me whether the vicar's wife has forgiven you for the marrow.

Yours in haste, Margaret