Most of the repair work is done by the women for the houses belong to them. When there is heavy work, new poles to cut or new stones to shape, the men help but even then the women supervise. Very often, as is true among all people, the women change the decorations of their houses. A new whim stirs the housewife’s imagination and in an hour’s time the entire scheme is changed. The husband never knows what to expect when he returns from a day in the fields. Decorations are easily applied for they consist of thin layers of clay mud, spread on the walls with the hands. Sometimes the entire house is smoothly plastered with red, yellow, grey, brown or white clay. Other houses are plastered only on the outside; some only on the inside. Here is a house that is plastered half-way down from the ceiling; next door is one that is plastered half-way up from the floor. Many of the walls are decorated with bright paintings. Red ochre makes a rich red plaster, while up on the mesa top is a layer of clay that gives a clean chalky-white color. When the two are combined, the effect is striking. Most of the paintings are small; the picture of an animal, a geometric design or perhaps just a band of color across a wall. In the center of Cliff Palace is a house that has a row of nine, bright red hands painted above the door. The woman who lives there placed her left hand on the wall and traced it nine times. Then she filled in the outlines with red ochre to produce the odd decoration. Near the south end of the town is the most beautifully decorated house of all. It is the third-floor room of the great four-story tower, the tallest structure in the cave. The young lady who lives there is very artistic and all four inside walls are beautifully painted in red and white. The lower half of the walls she painted with red ochre. The upper half she covered with the chalky-white clay. Where the two bands of color came together she painted large red triangles in groups of three. Thus the edge of the red border consists of three triangles, or peaks, then a straight line, three more triangles, and so on around the room. On the white upper portions of the walls are geometric designs painted in red; parallel straight lines, parallel zigzag lines and parallel fringed lines. The painting was cleverly done and the final effect is strikingly beautiful. The young woman is artistic in everything she does. Her pottery designs are the best in the city and she even wears her little yucca-string skirt at an artistically rakish angle. The men of the neighborhood often speak of her artistry. Their wives speak of her extremely poor cooking. As spring progresses the weather grows warmer. The wet, heavy snows come less frequently and most of the days are full of sunshine. Sometimes sharp winds sweep off the snow-covered mountains to the north and cut across the mesa tops but the sheltering cave keeps them out of Cliff Palace.