An arroyo keeps its own hours: gravel-bright and dry for months, then loud and brown for twenty minutes after a July cell parks over the mesa. The trees here learned that schedule long ago — juniper and piñon holding the high ground, cottonwoods marking wherever the water lingers. Pruning in this valley is a question of wind and weight, opening a crown so a gust passes through instead of shoving it over. When a bank scours out from under a leaner, removal is the honest answer, taken down in sections so nothing lands on the fence or the well house. Trimming and storm damage cleanup fill out the rest of the year, hauling away whatever the runoff and the wind leave behind.