Around the house and in the garden : a memoir of heartbreak, healing, and home improvement / Dominique Browning.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Browning, Dominique.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Browning, Dominique.

Divorce--Psychological aspects.

Divorce.

Home--Psychological aspects.

Home.

Loss (Psychology).

Environmental psychology.

Dwellings--Maintenance and repair.

Dwellings.

Gardening--Therapeutic use.

Gardening.

Homemakers--United States--Biography.

Homemakers.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

206 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Scribner, [2002]

Summary:

For Six Years, House & Garden editor-in-chief Dominique Browning has written a monthly column that weaves together personal stories and tips about home decorating, gardening, and raising children with universal themes of domestic life. In Around the House and in the Garden, Browning adapts and expands these well-loved pieces, adding dozens of new essays, to create an insightful and moving narrative about the solace and sense of self that can be found through tending one's home.

From bedrooms and bathrooms to gardens and trees, from the importance of a couch in the kitchen to the spiritual role of a grand piano, Around the House and in the Garden reveals the intimate relationship between home and self. Browning illustrates the ways her domestic needs, instincts, and arrangements have reflected major changes in her family life. Considering her own divorce, she focuses on how grief inhabits a room: "When I was divorced my sense of home fell apart. And so, too, did my house." Eventually, attention to her home helped to mend her heart, and the attention to her heart helped her to tend her home.

Brimming with warmth, knowledge, and the useful decorating and gardening tips that have made House & Garden a favorite for one hundred years, Around the House and in the Garden is a book for anyone who has ever felt the need to reinvent a life or a space, who has ever fallen in love with the idea of home -- the place where we reinvent ourselves, "the place where we have the final word about what goes where, ... what feels comfortable, what is life-enhancing ... a place that gives us strength to go out and embrace the world."

Contents:

What's it all About? 11

When it was Over 15

Who Gets the House? 20

Bedroom Rx 27

A Lifetime of Closets 33

Bubble Cathedrals 38

Garden Paths 43

Old Garden 47

The Chosen Family 52

Take a Seat 58

Lost and Found 62

Home Alone 68

Renovation Alert 72

Couch Therapy 76

Light my Fire 80

Ski Trip 85

Tree Hugger 90

The new House 94

For the Birds 101

Armchair Love 105

Smell the Roses 110

The Piano 114.

ISBN:

0743225953

OCLC:

48451098