Bilbo plants the acorn the day after he returns to Bag End.

He ignores the blatant stares of his fellow hobbits around him and the whispers behind his back. He forgets that he still has furniture to move inside from the impromptu auction yesterday. He turns his back on duty, for once, and settles on whim.

Bilbo plants the acorn the day after he returns to Bag End. He looks at the little upturned patch of dirt and then turns back to his nearly empty home, and goes to find a pot to make himself a cup of tea.

It takes a long while.

It takes a long while to get his home back in order. It takes a lot of the gold. It takes a lot of perseverance and it takes a lot of heart. Thankfully, Bilbo is short on none of those.

It takes a long while for him to fall asleep in his cosy home. He has been with dwarves for thirteen months, and the silence of The Shire is almost unsettling to him. He is happy to be back, but a part of him misses the adventure.

It takes a long while for the acorn to sprout, and for a little tendril of life to poke through the weathered ground.

Bilbo waters the sprout every day.

For the first five months, he takes a moment to either stop next to the patch of dirt, or look outside his little window when the weather is too inclement. He silently wills it on. He silently wills it to live. The acorn means perhaps more to him than any of the gold that Bilbo had brought back with him, and so he watches it with a careful eye.

He tends to the sprout every day, and even when the other hobbits don't accept him back into their ranks, talking of his nasty adventures and his time spent with gallumphing dwarves, and how he has no time for anything except tea and tending to his garden, Bilbo doesn't stop doing it.

Eight months after his return to Bag End, Bilbo has a fledgling tree.

He is intensely proud of the tree outside his hobbit hole.

It has been a lot of work.

Bilbo wouldn't change the past twenty-one months for all the gold in the world.

The tree quickly outgrows him.

While the tree does outgrow him, height-wise, it will never outgrow his heart. The meaning resides in the growing branches and the budding leaves.

Bilbo stoops to pick up one of the fallen leaves from the ground and runs his fingers over the smooth exterior of it.

He smiles fondly, and folds his fingers around the leaf. He straightens, and the tree towers over him in a way that should make him feel dizzy. Instead, it fills his overly large heart with a glow that he never wants to lose.

Two years after Bilbo returns from his misadventure of sorts, he now has a beautiful tree outside his home.

He lets himself out of his hobbit hole and trails down the path. He is shielded from the sun's blinding rays by the strong oak branches stretched above him.

Bilbo looks up at the tree and smiles gently after a moment. "It is a good morning indeed, old friend."

He moseys down the rest the path, puffing on his pipe. He blows smoke rings into the air and breathes in the scent of The Shire. He stands under the shade of the tree and inspects the world around him.

He thinks that it's a pretty good one.

As the fandom laments: "Why does it hurt so much?". I had to write something when I realised that acorns turn into oak trees. It's so beautiful. The whole prospect is so beautiful. I haven't recovered from this movie yet. x'D

I do not own The Hobbit. Thanks for reading!