It was also an opportunity to tour Mt. Lebanon resident Nancy Smith's charming garden from the brick patio to the compost area.

It was Nancy's recipe for compost that was the draw. The chance to see the architecture of an outstanding area garden featured in the Mt. Lebanon Public Library and the Western Pennsylvania Botanical Garden Tours was a bonus.

Nancy is one of the go-to master gardeners in Mt. Lebanon. She has combined her energy, wit and dedication to become the volunteer gardener in charge of the Mt. Lebanon Public Library Courtyard Gardeners since 2000. The all volunteer work force includes two other master gardeners Valery Locante and Agnes Lenckos and two soon to be master gardeners Roy Simmons and Eileen Lovell, who have transformed the library grounds from pedestrian to eye-popping.

As a hands-on gardener, she has developed her own practical idiom for producing volumes of that wonderful black gold from available leaves and clean vegetable scraps and the occasional straw bale left over from Halloween. No meat scraps or diseased plants are added. She grinds egg shells and sprinkles them around hosta to prevent slugs. Coffee grounds are scattered around acid loving plants.

"It takes about a year to produce compost," she said, holding up a handful of unscented black soil like matter.

Her compost production follows this cycle. In the fall she collects leaves and puts them in a pile at the back of her garden. She adds the kitchen vegetable scraps and healthy plant clippings, mixes it up and with regular turning lets moisture and heat do its work.

This mixture sits over the winter, turned again during the following spring and summer and is ready in the fall when the next batch of fallen leaves arrives to begin a new compost mound.

Nancy is also a wonderful cook and offers this bread recipe from the Storey Publishing Bulletin A-135 by Barbara Karoff.

Cottage Cheese Caraway Bread

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup small curd cottage cheese

12 cups currants

2 cups unbleached flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon caraway seeds

1/2 cup milk.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs, cottage cheese and currants and mix well.

In another bowl combine the flour, baking powder, soda, salt and caraway seeds. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the cheese mixture. Stir just enough to moisten.

Spoon the batter into greased pans and bake at 350 degrees until a tester comes clean.

Cool in pans for 10 minutes and then remove to a rack to cool completely

* "I have substituted three quarters tablespoon poppy seeds for the caraway seeds and used crasins instead if currents and it is still tasty and delicious," Nancy adds.