Who wouldn’t like to live in a nice, warm, dry home under a big mound of grass-covered earth? But since most of us didn’t, I am going back to sharing my pictures of Hobbity looking things in the town I did grow up in…

I read all of Tolkien’s books at least 12 times when I was young, so I ought to be able to spot some Hobbityliciousness…

Even before I developed a taste for doing my own reading, my dad used to read the books to me and my brothers when we were small. I loved falling asleep to his voice telling us about Wizards and Dwarves and Elves… but I especially loved the Hobbits…

They were such charming little creatures. They felt real to me. And the Shire seemed like a wonderful place to live…

Maybe it is all the English Christmas traditions… and the fact that the movie just came out… that made me start thinking about Hobbits again. Because there is something quintessentially English about the Hobbits and the Shire…

And once you start looking at the world through Hobbit’s eyes, you see Hobbityness everywhere, in the shape of a tree, or a moss-grown wall…

And just maybe one way to stay young and keep a little magic in your heart is, instead of escaping to a magic world like Middle Earth, try to find a little bit of Middle Earth in the real world around you…