“Okay. Anyways…” Both boys suddenly turned around and picked up their clippers again.

“Whoa. Wait a minute there-”

“It’s okay, Ms. Campbell. We know what to do. Dad called the county extension office, and this guy talked to all of us about lavender, how it’s grown, what to do and everything.”

“We know it’s a flower. Neither of us wanted to work around anything sissy like flowers, but it’s not your fault, after all, that your sister’s so bonkers-”

“Simon, shut up. You’re insulting her family, you nimwit.”

“Oh.” Simon glanced back, stricken. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything. I meant to say how sorry I was for you. Your sister scares all of us, and you have to deal with her all the time. It can’t be easy.”

“Anyways…” Sean started clip, clip, clipping as he talked. “We learned a bunch of junk. It was pretty interesting, about how there’s English lavender and French lavender and Spanish lavender. What you got here is apparently all kinds of crossbreeds.”

“And what we have to do is lop off about a third from the top and sides.” Simon glanced at her clippers, shook his head. “Yours aren’t sharp enough. They have to be good ones. But back to the job. We have to cut the stems back to a few inches from where the woody part starts. See?”

He motioned, and stayed hunkered down like that until she came over, scowling, and bent down to have a look. Then he went on. “This is like a big mess. It’ll take three years to get it back, the county guy said, but you can do it if it’s worked right. Lop the sides and top. Then the stems back. Then next year, you do another third. Then by the third year, it’ll be vible again.”

“Vible?”

“Vi-a-ble,” Sean said disgustedly. “He gets Cs in English. He’s so stupid.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too. Anyways, Ms. Campbell, you really got a lot of this lavender.”