Shire Forecast – Autumn Issue

Post date: Sep 21, 2022 3:5:53 PM

By Pycella Woodberry

Here’s the third Shire forecast for the autumn season. As usual, it covers the weather, latest happenings in the Shire, and an overview of events of hobbit interest.

Remember, if you have anything that could be shared in the upcoming seasonal forecasts, you can send a Quickpost letter to miss Pycella with your suggestions.

Cooler weather and storms after a long hot summer

Warm and sunny days are fun, but this summer has been a bit too warm for many Shire hobbits. Even our trusty weather gammers have retreated indoors from the heat, refusing to give any forecast on any potential rains or cooler temperatures. The ale consumption has risen high during the hot months, and the Yondershire inns have been bursting with thirsty customers. As the year turns into autumn, the weather is slowly cooling down, and things should get back to normal. It will be pretty warm still, but there should be more rains, and also cooler weather. It remains to be seen how nature reacts to these warmer temperatures. Will the badgers skip their winter sleep this year? Will the mushroom season be plentiful? Will baths feel warmer from now on? We will see in time.

Celebrating the harvest with hair-raising activities

Despite the hot summer, we look forward to a good harvest. Our brave farmers have been working hard, especially the Cottons who seem never to rest from their chores. As the harvest season reaches its end, it’s time to celebrate after all the hard work. There’s more time for enjoying entertainment, especially the scary kind. Small hobbits might go trick-or-treating in the hobbit villages, but some bold youngsters might look further. Maybe the strange cellar under the Hill will appear again? If that place isn’t scary enough, folks might seek for shivers in the mysterious Wistmead. And if that still isn’t scary enough, you can always pay a visit to Lobelia.

In addition to the regular festivals, there are some events to entertain hobbits who look for chills. There will be a scary concert by the Bullroarers in Wistmead, and Nannie will guide us through the ominous cellars under the Hill and share chilling tales. Also, the OAKS concert series is back after the summer break, with more music to entertain us. Hopefully with not too many scary bagpipe and pibgorn solos.

More missing cases

The bounders haven’t progressed much with the missing hobbit furniture cases. If the lyrics of a recently new hobbit song are true, the bounders have spent more time drinking the Shire dry. Although there are fewer cases of missing furniture these days, the case should not be left unsolved. Miss Pycella the pie seller has asked her bounder-in-training cousin Poppalora to investigate. Poppalora was last seen entering the Fox and Fiddle in Yondershire, but there’s hope that she’ll emerge one day with clues about the furniture case.

Poppalora working hard on the missing furniture case

Something else is missing too, and this time, from Farmer Maggot. He has been training a litter of small pups to search for mushrooms for him, but now the pups have gone astray. Maggot suspects that they were a bit eager in their training and are already sniffing out mushrooms somewhere. Maggot notes that he has enough dogs already, but if anyone should find these lost pups, he kindly asks those hobbits to take a good care of them and enjoy any mushrooms they might have found. As long as the shrooms are not from his fields, he adds.