Colour tattoo of sunflowers and a pink peony spreading over the upper arm and shoulder of a woman in a green striped sports bra, with earphones hanging from her neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Sunflowers and peony on upper arm and shoulder

Botanical · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman in a lime green striped sports bra, with earphones around her neck, is photographed from the side in a selfie-style angle, cropped below the face. Large sunflowers with yellow petals and brown centres, along with a pink peony-like bloom, cover her upper arm and extend onto the shoulder. The shading is soft and layered, with the petals and leaves blending into the surrounding skin tone against a sunny garden background.

Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Sunflower Peony Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad said the sunflowers would be taller than the shed by August, and he was right, though nobody had told the peonies to wait their turn. They came up pink and fat in the first week of June, three weeks before the florist's order was due, and my mother stood at the kitchen window with her tea going cold, saying that nothing in this garden had ever kept a date.

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The wedding was my brother Tomasz's, on a Saturday in a marquee on the cricket field at Hadlow. He wanted bright things. The florist wanted to sell him roses. I wanted to cut every peony in the garden before the rain flattened them, so I did, carrying them across the lawn in a washing basket while the wind pulled at my hair and a wasp went after the sugar in my lemonade.

The sunflowers were the problem. They stood nine feet tall, and their heads had turned to face the sun like a row of people waiting for a bus. Dad climbed the stepladder with a bread knife and a sack and cut eleven of them, one at a time, while I held the stems steady. He wrapped their necks in newspaper. In the marquee they stood in tin buckets along the trestles, far too big for any vase, and the guests kept walking up to them and laughing.

Thirty years on, the peony bush is still by the back wall, and nobody has ever managed to make it flower on a schedule. I think about that day whenever someone asks me to plan anything properly.