Chapter 10 Summary

Chapter 10 opens with a discussion of which trees lend themselves best to climbing and for what reasons. Olive trees, for example are wonderful for climbing because of good traction on the bark, slow moving or still branches and their overall shapes. Fig trees, on the other hand, make Cosimo uneasy because with time, he starts to feel himself saturated with the same gummy texture and all too aware of the swarming hornets all around him. Praise for the nut tree follows and concludes a discussion of the trees in which Biagio himself confesses that he sometimes wishes to join his brother. He describes how much a part of his everyday world the trees have become for Cosimo, being the characters he watches, the objects he fiddles with, the markers of the passing of the seasons, almost members of his extended family.

When winter...