Black and grey botanical tattoo on two calves, with a hare among strawberry plants on the left leg and a fox with mushrooms on the right.

Hare and fox with botanical calf sleeve

Botanical · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two calves show a paired botanical tattoo: a hare among strawberry plants and leaves on the left leg, and a fox with mushrooms, blackberries and leaves on the right. The work is built from fine engraved-style linework with stippled dotwork shading on the fur, fruit and fungi. The black and grey ink wraps around both legs against a grey concrete background.

Botanical Dotwork Calf Hare Fox Strawberry Blackberry Mushroom Leaves Animal Plant

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the marquee went up on Thursday and the wind has been at it ever since. I've lined the jam jars along the trestle, strawberry on the left and blackberry on the right, because Nell wanted the two families seated either side of the aisle and it seemed the only fair way to split the table plan. Uncle Alec has already asked whether the fox is coming to the speeches, and I told him the fox only comes out after dark, which is more or less true of Alec too.

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The hare is Tomasz's grandmother's, or so the story goes. She kept a strawberry bed behind the bakery in Ledbury and fought the foxes off it every June with a broom and a great deal of swearing. Her son married a woman who grew blackberries on the far side of the ditch, and for thirty years the two gardens had a feud conducted entirely through fence posts. Nobody told the children. Nell and Tomasz met over a stile on the bridleway, both of them with purple hands, each insisting the other was trespassing.

On the morning of the wedding I found the two of them in the orchard before the photographer arrived, sharing a punnet of wild strawberries and arguing about whether mushrooms could be picked in the rain. Neither had the good sense to look up. A ring of pale caps had come up overnight under the apple trees, and the grass was printed with two sets of tracks crossing and recrossing at the gate, one small and neat, one long and quick.

I'll leave the jars where they are. Come early on Saturday if you want the last of the jam, and bring your boots. Love, Mags.