Colour tattoo of a sunflower with yellow petals, grey-shaded centre and green leaves, on the upper arm.

Sunflower tattoo on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A sunflower is tattooed on the upper arm, shown in close view with the head of the flower at the centre. The petals are outlined and shaded in yellow and orange, with soft grey shading in the seed centre and muted green leaves behind the bloom. The background is softly out of focus, with a grey fabric edge at the lower left.

Botanical Realism Upper arm Sunflower Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last sunflower stood in the top field until the second week of January, long after Dad had written it off. Its petals had gone the colour of old brass and the frost had got into the grey middle, so it looked like a cracked saucer on a stick. Every morning I drove the quad past it on the way to the calving shed, and every morning the seeds had shifted a little, pulled out by the blue tits and the chaffinches working the rim.

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Gran used to say you never cut the best one down. You left it for the birds and kept the seeds from the tallest stalk for next year. She kept a biscuit tin on the windowsill of the back kitchen, the green one with the dented lid, and it held a hundred or so seeds folded into brown paper twists, each labelled in her small pencil hand. I found it when I was clearing her things and I still haven't opened it properly. The label on the lid says 1987 in capitals, and the paper has gone soft as cloth.

On the Sunday I went out with a bucket of feed and a pair of secateurs I didn't need. The head was heavier than I expected, and when I knocked it the seeds rattled like dice. I stood there with my glove off and the cold settling into my knuckles, thinking how little a thing needs to come back. I cut the stalk low, carried the whole grey crown inside under my coat, and laid it on the newspaper beside the tin.

In March I'll put them in the cold frame, one to a pot, and see what the frost has left. Dad will say they won't come up. I'll tell him Gran's always did, and he'll go quiet for a bit and then ask which pot I want first.