Welcome to the award-winning 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 Lander, author of The Almanac, a seasonal guide,

and this podcast is a collaboration between myself and Fern, makers of small batch seasonal perfume.

I love Fern. Today I'm wearing their winter 26 fragrance, uniquely inspired by the the sense of a lighthouse on the Isle of Sky.

Have you seen the latest film? It stars Ruth Wilson as a lighthouse keeper, waiting for a magical gift of mimosa.

Find it on social media or visit the Fern Cinema at www.furn.com. This month we're out on the marsh, exposed beneath

the fleeting February sky. Wading birds chatter and forage around us as we note the names of grasses

and hunt for sea beet and will are the wisps.

Silver fish slip through the shallows, and as we get closer to the sea, a song of the shipping forecast drifts across the water.

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.

On a February afternoon, the wind sweeps and blusters across the marsh,

flattening last year's grasses and combing the reedbed so that they hiss and rattle,

fresh dry and hollow. Cloud is driven hard overhead, letting through bursts of sunshine that sharpen

the edges of everything before passing us into February dullness again. There is a path that holds its line through this shifting world, a ribbon trodden firm by

boots and hooves.

It runs between drainage ditches where water lies, its surface breaking and reforming

under the wind.

In places, the ground drops into scrapes and shallow pools, which hold water and draw life to them.

Ducks gather here, teal, whiggin and mallard, lifting in alarmed bursts when the light changes or a shadow crosses wrong.

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