Tents help extend time spent outdoors into the fall. Taluka Tent Overseas sells the Amber shown here.

The Washington Post

For years, my friend Sally and I shared a predicament when it came to eating outdoors during the summer. Too much sun. And whenever there was a whisper of light rain, we both wished we had, well, a roof over our heads.

This year we solved those problems — with tents. We have the shade we’ve wanted in two very different styles. What has surprised us as the late-summer days shorten toward autumn is how a fabric shelter, far cheaper and more flexible than a sunroom or gazebo, takes the chill off the evening and extends the days we sit out. As our selections show, tents and canopies come in a range of prices and designs these days, from the decorative to the down-to-earth, the pretty to the purely practical.

Sally spent $1,400 (plus shipping) on a custom-designed canvas tent; I spent less than a tenth of that for a mass-produced urethane-coated polyester canopy. She put in a special order with a family-run business half a world a way; I clicked through the L.L. Bean Web site. Her shelter was shipped by sea and arrived in jute sacking sewn up with blue twine; mine came by UPS in a rectangular cardboard box, with preprinted return instructions. It took two people to heave Sally’s folded canvas out to her terrace and two more to lug the iron poles into place; at 30-something pounds, my canopy is light enough for one person to carry around or pop into the back of a car. (It even has a storage bag with wheels.)

My need to create shade came a couple of years ago, after an elm tree succumbed to disease. Its loss created more space to sit outside, but even with floppy hats and sunglasses, we felt exposed. Then I came across the 10-by-10-foot International E-Z Up Dome II shelter in the L.L. Bean catalog in a leafy green that blended with the house’s shutters and cost $115.

The magical thing about our E-Z Up, the reason my husband, Tim, and I love it, is that it really is easy to put up: It works like a collapsible umbrella but with four telescoping legs (one at each corner) that can be clicked into place at three heights. It may not amount to sitting under the outstretched limbs of a majestic tree, but our E-Z Up makes shade in a matter of minutes. And as the sun moves, so can our shade.

On weekends from spring through fall, we start the day with breakfast under our canopy, and if our numbers increase as the day goes by, up goes a second E-Z Up, and we can accommodate 10 for lunch.

The fabric is water- and fire-resistant, and I bought mosquito netting that attaches to the sides to create a kind of portable screened porch. The E-Z Up Web site shows models in different dimensions (and prices), some with solid sides to keep out wind and rain.

Another thing Tim and I love about our E-Z Up is that it is easy to take down. If we’re heading out for the afternoon or see a storm coming in, we can unclick and close the concertina canopy just as quickly as we clicked and opened it.

By contrast, “there’s nothing the least bit easy up” about the tent Sally ordered, as she is the first to admit. It took three people nearly two hours to erect it. Nor, I suspect, is it particularly easy to take down. But it is so breathtakingly beautiful, who would WANT to take it down? It doesn’t blend in; it isn’t intended to. It’s a modern folly in a comedy of colors. Since putting it up, Sally has noticed hummingbirds in her back yard, presumably lured by the marigold yellow canvas.

Sally, whose mother’s family traces its roots in India back some 300 years, tells me she has been longing for years to have a traditional Indian tent, a descendant of the princely structures used to accommodate hunting parties in the days of the Raj. Friends in Baltimore recommended a supplier: the Taluka family in the state of Rajasthan, which has been making wedding tents, ceremonial marquees and canopies since 1962. The Talukas fit their tents with the kinds of extras I associate with such indoor upholstery as draperies, valances and piping (albeit in canvas or heavy cotton).

Several U.S. companies (such as Big Sky Tents, based in Martha’s Vineyard, and Raj Tents, based in the Bay Area) import tents from India. But in these days of digital photos and Internet ordering, Sally saw little reason not to go directly to the source. The Talukas maintain a Web site that boasts nearly 20 types of tents with such evocative names as the Jaigarh (a circular marquee hung with curtains and named after “the secret treasure house of the royal family”), the Royal Pergola (in bold red and blue) and the more prosaic BBQ tent (with skyward vents designed to accommodate Indian butchers and their smoky mobile grills).

The Talukas say it usually takes about three weeks to make a tent to order. Delivery time and costs depend on whether it is shipped by sea or air. Sally’s tent had an unexpected delay after the roads in Rajasthan were closed by rioters demanding improved economic rights. “All the highways have been blocked,” the Talukas wrote in an e-mail. “And our canvas got stuck.” Sally’s tent finally arrived in the United States three months after her initial inquiries.

Her terrace is now shaded by a 14-by-9-foot “Maharani Canopy” in rich yellow with yellow-and-white barber-pole stripes up each supporting leg and cotton lining with a traditional Jaipur block print in dark pink on white. The tent can have three (rather than four) solid sides because it is intended, as Sally put it, for the maharani (that’s the maharajah’s wife) “to lounge around in and receive visitors.”

So far, Sally’s visitors seem to be the ones doing most of the lounging, though, while she bustles around bringing them food and drinks.

Her son wants to leave the tent up all year as a sort of semi-permanent addition to the house — an exotic hangout for today’s incense-burning teens. But she’s planning to take it down later this month. Next year, it will stay up throughout the summer, whatever the weather. The canvas may fade, and Sally’s a little worried about it shrinking, but any tent designed to survive a swampy Indian summer, she reckons, can probably cope with Washington area weather. She’s drilling holes in her terrace to make sure the tent is firmly anchored, and when a recent forecast predicted high winds, she invited over a friend who sails and is “good at knots” to help attach guy ropes.

I have to admit that, for all the breezy versatility of my E-Z Up, I find myself looking with a little envy at the Taluka tent’s exuberant tassels and valances.

And then I wonder about the practicality of such a structure, whether — despite the holes in the terrace and the expert knots — some successor to Hurricane Ike may just turn Sally’s grand maharani canopy into an E-Z Down. ...Tent Resources

Big Sky Tents: www.bigskytent.com (Includes a page on decorative options at www.bigskytent.com/

products/decorative.html)

E-Z Up Instant Shelters: www.ezup.com

Maharaja Tent Co.: www.maharajatent.com

Raj Tents: www.rajtents.com

Sangeeta International: www.indiantents.com

Taluka Tent Overseas: www.talukatent.com