I came across this on another website where I saw someone was hoisting a sail of some sort in order to shade a section of his rink. I have an older blue tarp - 80' long that was used for the rink a number of years ago. Any reason why I couldn't rig something to hoist it between two giant maple trees that would shade the rink - other than it being a giant blue eyesore from December - March.

First thing first, I would need to wait until February to see how high I would need to raise it in order to protect the north side from the warmer sun. I can just see my wife's eyes roll back into her head when I explain to hear what I plan to do.

Has anyone here ever tried this or something similar?

Made me think of this quote....

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

Oh I have trees! Unfortunately they are all deciduous and instead of creating shade for me in the winter, they make backbreaking work in the fall. If I plant spruce trees now, it will create great shade in the winter for the future home owner but not enough time for this guy.

I actually have the contact info for a guy (in MA I think) who does this...and I've just been dragging my feet on contacting him and writing the story. Let me look him up.

The blue tarp I have has all the grommets in it already so I figure some clothesline wire through the grommets and some pulleys in the tree and voila - SHADE!

Or, VOILA, your neighbors hate you. (But we don't care about them anyways).