Colour tattoo of a sunflower with pink cherry blossoms and a green vine curling across the side of a torso, in a botanical style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sunflower and cherry blossom on the side ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A large sunflower with yellow petals and an orange-brown centre sits at the top of the design, with pink cherry blossoms and falling petals scattered around it. A green vine with curling tendrils and leaves runs down the skin toward the lower edge of the frame. The work uses bold outlines with soft, painterly colour fills in yellow, pink, green and orange against a light skin tone.

Botanical Ribs Sunflower Cherry blossom Vine Petal Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Win,

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The sunflowers on the towpath at Stoke Bruerne have gone over, every head bowed like schoolgirls told off, but the seeds are fat in them and the goldfinches are taking the lot. I stopped the boat so Dad's old dog could chase them. You'd have laughed. He's stiff in the back legs now but he still thinks he's a terrier.

I've been thinking about the blossom tree at the Hatton flight, the one that dropped half its petals on the roof while we waited for the lock to fill. Pink as tinned salmon and twice as slippery. I scraped a handful off the cabin top and pressed them in the back of Mum's recipe book, between the Victoria sponge and the bread and butter pudding. Keep the book safe. There's a kettle stain on the sponge page that I'm afraid is mine.

The lock-keeper's girl, Imogen, says the canal company is dredging the cut past Braunston next spring, and the bindweed along the wharf wall will be torn out with the reeds. She asked if I'd take the boat down the Oxford arm before then, because the water runs cleaner there. I said I'd think about it. I have, and I've decided to plant a row of sunflowers on the towpath behind the bench, where the ground is soft and nobody mows.

So when you come up at Easter, bring the seeds from Mum's tin. Don't tell Dad. He'll want to know why I'm growing something that turns to face the sun all day when I could be taking the boat home.

Love, Jess