Three things from DAH. Free every Friday!
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DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. We just got our bumble bee front door bell installed. Yes, we're away with the fairies. I expect a bailiff or two in the legal cases noted in that just-linked article. 
First up this week, Bailiff … 
The word "bailiff" has legal and court system meaning in both the USA and Britain. But it has a secondary definition in Britain: "one who manages an estate or farm" (Merriam-Webster). I prefer the secondary. It's gentler and kinder, assuming the estate or farm is nicely managed. Long ago I was a part-time farmer (my then-wife was primarily responsible for our orchard and vineyard).. One year we had an enormous garden after our city-dwelling friend Dan suggested that, since we had a tractor, we could readily turn up a lot of soil for turnips and tomatoes, herbs and other vegetables. Sadly, the tractor wasn't much use in hand-work around the plants. It was an interesting lesson in the effective use of tools (and tractors). But, had the orchard and vineyard been in Britain, I could have been called co-bailiff. Wouldn't that have been special?

Second up this week, Bayleaf … 
The biggest blessing about farming was growing lots of herbs, which we could do in a smaller garden space (no tractor required). We had ready access to bayleaf (from an established shrub, not the large garden, which was all annuals). I have no idea what type of Bay we grew … California? Bay? Indian? Mexican? Likely California Bay, planted as a landscape element, rather than a culinary one. In that case, it might have poisoned us with methaemoglobinaemia. Methaemoglobinaemia is bad for the blood. I can't speak to how bad. I can say that I'll stick to Bay Laurel. Safer (and I can purchase what little I'd use). I'm more of a marjoram guy, and seldom want to drop things in my preparations that I have to fish out prior to serving (bay leaves). An Herbs of Provence blend actually suits me just fine for most things. Yes, I'm aware that the blend can include bay (see the next paragraph), which isn't fish-outable from my culinary preperartion. And I don't even know what type of bay (hopefully Laurel). Call the bailiff! Either definition: the farming one to check on bay type, or the legal once I've been poisoned. 

Third up this week, Belief …  
Aren't we trusting. Our current Herbs of Provence commercial blend (a good one … based on price, I believe it must be good.) contains lavender, which I now read (while looking up "bayleaf") is an American innovation. Not Provencal. Not in the blend, traditionally. "Traditionally, the herbs de Provence blend includes thyme, oregano, summer savory, and rosemary. These are plants that grow abundantly on the hillsides and in the fields of Provence, in southern France" (MarthaStewart.com).  Note: No bay! No lavender! And where's my marjoram? I suppose oregano is close enough. I use them somewhat interchangeably. Oregano when I want something a bit bolder. Beliefs are  curious things. Even when we consider ourselves particularly thoughtful and evaluative, there are so many things we unthinkingly accept at face value. Because we're busy and distracted and there's so much out there. You have to believe in some things just to get through the day. Christine comments while driving, "We just trust that those cars coming towards us will stay on their side of the highway. We believe they will." Obviously, that belief doesn't always hold. But how can we manage without the trust, that belief? No driving. Not much of anything that leaves us exposed to something crashing or falling or anything else a beleagered non-farming bailiff might have to deal with.

If you're interested in detectice fiction … 
'Murder Will Out': The Detective in Fiction,
by T.J.Binyon
Not a recent book, but new to me (1989, Oxford University Press). A history of detective characters in fiction. The Professional Amateur; The Amateur Amateur; The Police; A Few Oddities … these are the section titles. Chapters within the sections are short, encouraging merely dipping in with guidance from the Table of Contents and Index, rather than reading straight through. Bought used. Lots of fun. Fun created before 1989, so no newer sleuths.


And a bit more:

Sometimes
by Mary Oliver

1.
Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
    or a flower,
unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,
    a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them
    some fervent and necessary arrangement.

2.
Sometimes
melancholy leaves me breathless.

3.
Later I was in a field full of sunflowers.
I was feeling the head of midsummer.
I was thinking of the sweet, electric
    drowse of creation,

when it began to break.

In the west, clouds gathered.
Thunderheads.
In an hour the sky was filled with them.

In an hour the sky was filled
    with the sweetness of rain and the blast of lightning.
Followed by the deep bells of thunder.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

4. Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

5.
Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
    but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.

6.
God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body

like the hands of my beloved.
Let the cathead appear again—
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably—
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

7.
Death waits for me, I know it, around
    one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.


And that's all for this week.
See section 4 of the above poem for my usual TheThereThere sign-off.