Down in La Cienega the ground is generous in a way the mesa above it never is — spring water near the surface, deep cottonwood shade, grass that stays green in a valley the old road ran straight through. At dusk the swallows come out over the fields and cut the air the way they have every summer evening here. El Rancho de las Golondrinas keeps lawn and grounds in that valley and the country around it: mowing the open green, trimming close along fence and wall, keeping paths and their margins clear, and gathering up the fallen limbs and leaves each season brings down. Work at the bottom of a valley has its own tempo — cooler, softer underfoot, later to warm. What remains is a long stretch of tended green with the Jemez going purple beyond it.