Welcome to the Fern podcast as the season turns.

Released on the first of each month, the episodes follow the changing landscape of the seasons,

from the moon and the stars to the tides and the trees.

I'm Leah Lane Dirt's author of The Almanac, A Seasonal Guide,

and this podcast is a collaboration between myself and Fern,

makers of small batch organic perfume.

I love wearing Fern, in my quest to live in tune with the seasons.

Applying the season's perfume is a lovely little ritual that reminds me to use all my senses.

We hope that this brief guide to the month ahead will awaken you to the rhythms of the year and help you to settle deeper into the seasons.

Well wrapped, I emerge from the busy, warm, brightly lit kitchen and a waft of spiced fruits and browning pastry scents, and head with purpose to the end of the cold,

quiet garden. The earth is dark and damp now.

The stems bear.

The boots on the path disturb nothing.

The slumber is too deep.

Creatures and plants alike have made their peace with the cold and the wet.

They are pulled back into the earth or tucked under a duvet of soil or crumpled, softened leaf.

Only the Robin watches me brightly, always nosy about events in what is now its territory,

since I have temporarily withdrawn.

I stop and look around, breath clouding, then reach up for the last remaining green, the evergreen holly and ivy,

a reminder to those indoors that life still goes on out here in the solstice gloom, and that light will soon return.

The rest of the garden is left to the short and already dimming day,

quickly turning to the long solstice night.

...