Pencil sketch of a lupin-style flower spike on a single stem, drawn in a botanical style with faint blue guide lines.

Pencil sketch of a lupin flower spike

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil line drawing of a tall spike of lupin-like flowers with buds, rising from a thin diagonal stem. The outlines are loose and sketchy, with some shading along the petals and stem. Pale blue construction lines show the cone-shaped structure behind the flowers, and the background is plain white.

Botanical Flower Bud Stem Sketch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways down Thursday Lane since seven, and by eleven the only thing left on your trestle is the lupins, six spikes standing in a galvanised bucket like unlit candles. You sold the sweet peas by nine and the wallflowers by ten, but nobody buys lupins in the rain. They are too tall for a coat pocket and too proud to be haggled down.

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Then old Mrs Ashdown from the flat above the bakery ducks under your awning, shakes her umbrella over your boots, and asks for the blue ones. You only have purple left. "Bees go mad for these," she says, and you tell her the bottom flowers open first while the buds at the top wait their turn. She laughs and says that is how her husband courted her, all bloom at the base and promise at the crown. She buys the tallest spike, pays in coppers, and tucks it under her arm like a rolled newspaper.

Once she has gone, you stand with the drumming tarpaulin over your head and notice the stem you kept back, the one with a closed bud pinched at its tip, rain beading on the fine hairs of the stalk. You wrap it in yesterday's Gazette, slip it inside your jacket, and start folding the trestle.

By Sunday the lowest flowers have opened into a row of small violet mouths, and the bud at the top is still shut tight, keeping itself for a day with more sun in it.