Like Ffwydriad said, it's all so peaceful and quite, just like we imagine the Shire. But then comes the stealthy twist in the second to last paragraph, which made me feel that this is set short before The Lord of the Rings. Soon, Samwise will have to go to the shadows of Mordor. We know. But he doesn't know yet, he'll just go to prune the hedges.

There's only one tiny thing I might have done differently. Thinking about mustard and then opening the beer is a bit of a non sequitur. To make the story flow even better, I would try to imply that the bitter(?) taste of beer goes nearly as well with the bread and cheese as the mustard would go. Or that Sam still wants the beer, although he doesn't need it to compensate for the spicy(?) mustard. Just something to connect the two sentences. But I cannot think of how to word it.

I'm sorry for being so terribly late to everything; I'm quite busy these days.

HG

I don't know why I like this so much. It's well written, but it's a pretty simple story. There's just something really pretty and calming about it. Very peaceful. It makes me want to read a lot of calming stories about what happens off screen when everything is quiet and boring.