Welcome to the Fern podcast, as the season turns.

Released on the first of the month, each episode will be following the changing landscape of the seasons,

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

I'm Leah Lainters, author of The Almanac, a seasonal guide,

and this podcast is created by Fern,

makers of small batch organic perfume,

who blend, barrel age and bottle four fragrances a year,

released at the equinoxes and solstices.

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.

It's October.

For much of October we can play at autumn.

We get golden sunlight, tapestry-like hillsides, morning mists, all without any great drop in temperature.

A gentle slide into everything good about autumn.

We light the fire because we can, because it's October, not because we're so cold that we have to. The countryside is ravishing and ripening before our

eyes. Every hedgerow glistening with lipstick red hips and purple elderberries, hazelnuts and

walnuts and glossy sweet chestnuts in their hedgehog

casings, every tree a different shade. The years spiders are now fully grown and are suddenly

everywhere, stretching their webs over hedges and across the garden path, the fine strands breaking

across your face each morning. We'll gather in nuts

and logs and final crops because towards the end of the month, things start to feel more serious.

Frosts arrive, and the clocks go back, and we remember what all this ripening is about.

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