Winter in the Mesilla Valley belongs to the pecans: the orchards go bare and orderly, the Organs stand up sharp in the cold air, and for a few months every branch in the valley is legible. That is the season for pruning — shaping young wood, lifting the low limbs, taking out whatever crowds the middle. Around the old plaza the shade trees get their trimming then too, kept clear of the walls and the portal roofs. Removal is quiet work in quarters this tight, lowered in sections between the acequia and the driveway. When a spring dust-wind or a monsoon cell knocks a crown apart, storm damage cleanup puts the yard back in a day.