Colour botanical sleeve tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, showing peonies, lavender sprigs, leaves and a small brown songbird.

Peony and songbird sleeve on an arm

Botanical · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

The tattoo covers the shoulder, upper arm and part of the forearm with large peony blooms, sprigs of lavender and green leaves, with a small brown songbird perched near the shoulder. Linework is defined and the petals are shaded with soft pink and red tones, with some grey detailing on the bird. The colour is mostly soft pinks, reds and greens against the skin, and the design wraps around the arm in a continuous flowing composition.

Botanical Neo-trad Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Peony Flower Bird Songbird Lavender Leaves Bee

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad grew peonies in the strip behind the Pippin orchard, forty plants he had carried down from Lincolnshire in a van with the back seats taken out. By the last week of August the heads were heavy and blush-pink, the lavender along the wall had gone to seed, and the bees were drunk on all of it. I was supposed to be counting windfalls for the cider man. Instead I sat on the wall and watched a small brown bird work its way along the stems.

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It came every morning around seven and landed on the same cane by the gate, tilting its head at the bloom nearest the path. Dad said it was a linnet, or possibly a pipit, and that it had no business being so tame. I said it was waiting for the petals to drop so it could get at the seeds, which was the kind of thing I said then, when I still believed the garden was mine to explain.

The peony I loved was the biggest, a double pink thing with a crown of gold stamens, and by Thursday its outer petals had split wide enough for a bee to crawl in and not come out. Dad came down the rows with the secateurs and stopped beside me. He didn't cut it. He said a flower that open had finished being useful to us and had started being useful to everything else, and we could take the bird's share from it.

We left it standing. The cider man came for his windfalls and went away with fewer than promised, the bird took its seeds the following week, and I learned that the gardens which look like they belong to you are mostly lent.