One of the main reasons why I bought this house is because I fell in love with the patio in the back of the house. It’s by no means a “pretty” patio, there is absolutely no elegance to it. The uneven cement floor shows traces of gray and red under its green paint. It has an OK glass table, but the chairs are cheap plastic (at least they don’t rot under the rain and I don’t have to worry about bringing them inside). The vegetation, controlled while the previous owner lived here, has gone wild: there are ferns and fig branches and tree leaves and so forth. Our patio clearly has its own micro-climate, and if anything, it resembles a tropical jungle. I love it! 🙂
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What I like the most about my patio is my hammock. It’s multi-colored and tacky and absolutely lovely to lay on. It’s made in the Yucatan, and the Yucatecans make the absolutely best hammocks in the world, definitely the most comfortable.
I first came across Yucatecan hammocks when I traveled through the region 18 years ago. I found out that many, if not most, Yucatecans sleep on hammocks rather than beds and I had to find out for myself why that was the case. It doesn’t take long to figure it out, in the oppressing heat of the region, a hammock keeps you much cooler than a bed. I bought two for myself, a cotton one and a “silk” one (these are made from artificial fibers, not real silk). Cotton hammocks are said to be more comfortable (not my experience) and I think they’re cheaper, but silk hammocks are able to withstand the rain. I used the cotton one during my trip and then I stored them for seven years. There was no place to hang them in our little apartment. But I kept them, and when I saw the patio, I knew immediately my hammock would have a home.
And so it did. For seven years my “silk” hammock happily hang on the back and I spent many a happy morning or afternoon laying on it, reading a book or dreaming. I remember going there with my babies, swinging while telling them stupid made up stories about the garden. They were too young to understand 🙂
I also hang up my cotton hammock, but I was too lazy to remove it once the rains came, and it didn’t last more than one or two seasons. It wasn’t a huge lost, my patio can’t really fit more than one hammock in any case 🙁
After seven years, however, my hammock gave up. It was still usable, but it looked frumpy and tired, and its holes were starting to grow. I figured it was time for another one. Despite the fact that we had a hammock we had bought in Brazil a couple of years before, I wanted another Yucatecan hammock. Fortunately, these are easily (if expensively) available over the internet.
I can’t remember where I bought mine, so I can’t give you store recommendations, but if you do a search for “Yucatecan Hammock” you’ll find a bunch of places that sell them. I think I paid $85 for mine, which I hope is several times what they cost in the Yucatan (now that I’m going, I’m planning on buying another one), and it wasn’t as tightly knitted as the one I had before, but it’s great nonetheless. I love it! Indeed, I think it’s the one item in the house that makes me the happiest.