• Borage, you sure are purdy.

The Herb Society of Nashville's annual herb sale this Saturday lets you pursue this in extravagant fashion — you can hardly imagine an herb they don't offer, including those of dubious culinary purpose (lookin' at you, yarrow and rue).

The popular herbs have especially deep benches: There will be 14 varieties of thyme, 13 basils and 11 sages, says the society. See a complete list of the plants for sale here.

The sale begins at 9 a.m. and continues until 2 p.m. If you're looking for something specific or unusual, arriving early is a good idea. There are lots of plants, but things do sell out. The line begins forming at 8 or earlier.

This year, there's a $5 parking fee to raise money for Save the Fairgrounds, so carpool if you're cheap. Take a box or crate if you can to carry your treasure. Leave your pet at home, and no carts please.

A few non-herbs will also be available, including tiarella, impatiens, salvia and roses. The Compost Man will be there — strike a deal with him for a couple hundred pounds of black gold and expect your best garden yet.

• 1920 newspaper clipping encourages Nashvillians to raise backyard chickens.

Green Hills was clearly a different place 40-something years ago, but then again, maybe not. The benefits of keeping chickens, including a supply of perfectly fresh, delicious eggs from your own backyard, have always held an attraction, most recently leading chicken advocates to press the city council to legalize hens in some neighborhoods.

As this 1920 article from the Tennessean demonstrates, Nashville urbanites needed as much advice for raising backyard chickens in the '20s as they do in the '10s, almost 90 years later.

Post-World War I inflation was driving up the cost of everything. The newspaper's correspondent (who lived off 12th Avenue across from what is now Frothy Monkey) recommended that readers raise their own chickens to supply inexpensive eggs and meat.

What's interesting here is how basic the information is. Obviously directed at city folks, the article begins with the encouraging statement that "there is hardly a home anywhere without sufficient space on which a few fowls can be accommodated" and continues with advice on selecting a breed and constructing a coop.

Once it passed the settlement/fortress stage, Nashville was never a small town, really. By 1949, there were around 250,000 residents. Still, you'd think that a 1920 resident would be near enough to farm living (geographically and chronologically) that keeping hens would be a commonly held skill.

Apparently not, and not much has changed. We could all take a lesson from Mr. Oden's 1920 advice: Select a large breed that's a prolific layer; offer it about 20 square feet of yard; grow some green stuff for the ladies to nibble; and fence them securely against predators.

Update: Click here for a larger image of the article.

A friend of a friend swears by Pinetree and after last year, it's my "go to" for seeds and plants. I found plants in there that work in the South, with our hot summers and long growing season, including fennel and celery varieties that will actually grow here.

Unlike other seed catalogs, Pinetree (which is based in New Gloucester, Maine) stocks just a few varieties of each herb or vegetable — consider the the four pages of tomatoes a special indulgence — and each variety is selected for distinctive and useful traits.

For the adventurous palate and planter, Pinetree offers Asian vegetables, and European vegetables like Russian kale and orache, mache, Italian tomatoes for sun-drying and Greek basil. No, they probably won't grow well here, but they might.

(That's what winter is all about — the possibility that in summer, something miraculous will spring from the dirt in your backyard or planter.)

• Photo from the Stewart Orchard blog

Mind you, it's just an experiment, what with all the "ifs," but if the "fruit bonds" being sold to fund Stewart Orchard sell well and nature cooperates, then in a couple of years, Nashvillians could be picking berries and tree fruit in Davidson County.

It's an idea that has a lot of people pretty enthusiastic, none more so than grower Tatum Stewart, who sells his Ashland City-grown fruit at the West Nashville Farmers Market. Stewart hopes interested Nashvillians will buy a "fruit bond" to fund a new orchard in Bells' Bend. Using an intensive new technique, he's planting almost 700 peach trees and 150 apple trees this winter on 20 acres offered by a Bells' Bend landowner. The technique involves trellising and irrigation, and the payoff is that the first crops should be ready for picking in two years.

Obviously the expenses are front-end intensive, and that's where the fruit bond funding comes in. Buy a $30, $60 or $100 five-year bond, and your money goes to creating an orchard for Davidson County.

In return, you get an annual "dividend" of fruit for five years, including blackberries, apples and/or peaches, the kind and amount depending on which bond you buy. Details after the jump.

Spotted on craigslist, this plaintive ad (now removed by its author) tells a story. It's a story about love, and birds. About urban farmers and couples. About poultry and bonding. About hunger and ideals. Submitted for your amusement, nourishment, sympathy or schadenfreude. There's a lot here in just 47 words.

We have 2 roosters who have just started to crow. We live in the city so they need a new place where they won't disturb anyone. i would eat them, but my girlfriend named them. They are healthy, well feathered, about three months old, and look delicious.

• PHOTO: BRANDON FROHNE

On his blog, Frohne has been charting the progress of the group's urban plot off Woodmont Boulevard., from cutting trails to installing rain barrels. Last week, he delivered heirloom Cherokee Purple tomato seedlings all over Nashville (including the Scene offices) to call attention to the project.

Tomorrow, Frohne and his urban gardeners are inviting volunteers to help plant this year's crop of heirloom tomatoes, radishes, beets, squash, okra and other vegetables. Anyone interested should meet Frohne in the Park Manor lobby, 115 Woodmont Blvd., at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, May 12. He is asking volunteers to bring work clothes — he kiddingly suggested a Speedo, but I think that was before he saw me — along with work gloves and a hand trowel. Beverages will be provided.

For more info about specific varieties and the overall project, the full email runs below.

• Aleks Sennwald

Food progress wasn't far behind: Dana Kopp Franklin highlighted the local sprouting of the farm-to-table movement at Capitol Grille and Miel, with interesting tidbits about restaurateur Seema Prasad's experiences pulling up fresh veggies from Miel's little farm plot in the morning and serving them up that night.

(Dana also wrote a terrific piece about frogs for the issue as well — worth checking out, even though it doesn't relate to food.)

• Tomato plants at mAmbu.

"There’s a story behind all these tomatoes — that’s what I like, " says Hartel.

Hartel is up to her porch in tomato plants, which you know if you've been to mAmbu recently. So she's having a sale on tomato plants. Previously priced at just $3 apiece (64 cents less than Home Depot), now they're a buck apiece.