Cousin Emily Dickinson's Herbarium

Wandering Through "A Brighter Garden" with Emily Dickinson and Tasha Tudor

When Emily Dickinson was a young lady it was very fashionable to make an Herbarium. Specimens were pressed until dried, then put in a book and labeled.

The fresh cut rose on the flower press is Diane's old fashioned rose that never fails to bloom around Independence Day. After the photograph was taken it was put in the flower press to be used later in The Corgyncombe Herbarium.

Corgyncombe Cottage has several flower presses in use for pressing and drying flowers that will be used for making The Corgyncombe Herbarium.

A simple and lovely white geranium.

Emily Dickinson would bake the gingerbread for the "neighborhood children" and transport it down from her window with rope and basket to the eagerly waiting children on the lawn below. Diane used Emily Dickinson's receipt to make Gingercakes.

 In "A Brighter Garden", the illustrations by Tasha Tudor go through the seasons, as does Emily Dickinson's poetry. The poetry in the book was collected by Karen Ackerman. Setting in front of the book are Emily Dickinson's Gingercakes and a cold glass of Corgyncombe Dairy Goat Carmella Lucille's good milk to enjoy at elevenish whilst wandering through "A Brighter Garden" with Emily and Tasha. The Gingercakes are delicious with milk!

We named our Corgi Emily after Diane's great great grandmother Emily Jane (Jones) Shepard and Emily (Jones) Shepard's cousin Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, as well as Emily Dickinson's mother Emily (Norcross) Dickinson.

The old fashioned rose by candlelight.

The pink rose tussie-mussie above also has forget-me-nots, baby's breath, lavender, lady's mantle and thyme. Diane oft' times makes a tussie-mussie with the pink rose to take to evening Independence Day festivities.

Because of her love and interest in flowers Emily's father built a conservatory for her. Like Emily, because Diane found such pleasure in gardening, her father built her a greenhouse.
Here is a link to: Diane's Greenhouse

Charlotte also did some baking using Emily Dickinson's receipt.
Here is a link to: Emily Dickinson's Gingerbread ReceiptHere is a link to: Emily Dickinson and Cooking

Emily Dickinson's Herbarium is viewable online.
Here is a link to the first page of pressed specimens in Emily Dickinson's Herbarium.
On the left is a list of pages that you can click on to view Emily's Herbarium further.

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Corgyncombe Goat Kiddles Lucy and Louisa May

The Flying Lu-Lou's

Sarah and Lucy
The Corgyncombe Goat Kiddles Lucy and Louisa May are such a delight to watch as they jump and run and do side winding wheelies.

They can even fly!


Louisa May


Goat kiddles are so cute but they do require a lot of work, with milking, feeding, mucking their pen, hauling water, hoof trimming, and the gathering and the bringing in of the hay.

We oft' times fondly refer to the goat kiddles as our "goatie puppies" as they will follow along behind as a puppy would.






Diane and Sarah have enjoyed teas and elevenishes with their friend Tasha Tudor and discussed many of their common kindred interests. One can imagine it would be such fun to have a tea over by the garden of herbs whilst watching the goat kids play, with such kindred country ladies as Tasha Tudor, Beatrix Potter, Helen Allingham, Gertrude Jekyll, Louisa May Alcott, and Edith Holden, all together at the same tea.


When impatient for her bottle, Lucy can wail like The Queen of the Night in "The Magic Flute"! We think she learned from us humorously singing it in the barn in the months before she was born! We've never heard anything quite like it before from a goatie puppy!




Lucy and Louisa May are blended in motion as you can see Lucy the reddish brown goat with Louisa's white ears!











The other night as we were walking down to the barn to do the milking it was sprinkling, when all of a sudden the sun came out and a full arc rainbow appeared just as were to go into "The Ark", what we call our barn. It was the latest in the day rainbow I had ever seen. Whilst milking Corgyncombe Dairy Goat Carmella Lucille, I enjoyed the lovely sunset. When the milking and feeding were done and we came outside our barn called "The Ark", the fireflies were flickering out in the meadow and over by the garden of herbs.

Things such as these are a country woman's joy!

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