Hobbit Mind.

The evening being twilit and temperate, I was leaning on a farm gate looking west as usual (although, since we’re this close to the middle of the year, most of the dramas and spectacular colour washes are to be seen in the north west) when I remembered something Sam the Sheep Farmer said to me at about the same time last year. He said that he likes nothing better than to come through the small wood to his middle field at twilight, there to lean on the gate and see how well the grass is growing. Need I say that the view from the gate of his middle field looks west?

He’s right, you know. There is something truly compelling about the combination of gate, grass, balmy air and a painter’s sky which hobbits understand in the deep heart’s core, but most people don’t.