The topaz jewels have all fallen from their settings now on this New Year’s Eve, and that splendid necklace of glowing Cottonwoods along The River is now a different but an equally splendid and rich coloring, of two tones of gray, high above the miles long ruff of pink and orange-brown Tamarisk withies. The tall trees are bare finally, each their proud individuality show. The Mesquite hold on, late to leaf out and the last to shed, some now dried and yellow, some withered though green, but some with leaves succulent enough as if still to be able to gather to their tree the gifts of that pale winter sunlight. They took us through that Solstice night and now like the holly of the Green Knight carry life across the Great Divide of one Border year on into the next.