Book excerpt: This journal portrays a country year, not as a calendar of flowerings and perennial rituals, but as an artist's impression, recording private special occasions and reflections prompted by a favourite scene or unexpected sight. Culled from two decades of diary notes, these entries evoke the natural year from the Scottish Highlands to the Cornish Cliffs: a red kite stops the mid-May traffic in Dyfed, July in Norfolk reveals Breckland's history and December brings a mistletoe auction in Worcestershire.