Follow any irrigation ditch out of La Junta and you will find trees — elm, hackberry and cottonwood that planted themselves along the water and grew up crooked and stubborn. R&L Tree Service & Removal LLC handles those and the yard trees in town: trimming out the broken and the rubbing, pruning so a canopy stays over the house rather than on it, and removing whole trees once a trunk has gone soft. Autumn on this end of the state is wind and gold and a sky that will not quit, and it is a fine season to take a tree down and get the ground cleared before winter. After a squall rolls in off the shortgrass there is always somebody with a limb across a fence line. Out here shade gets planted on purpose and kept on purpose.