Road trip to Japan

Mrs. Phactor organized a road trip yesterday to find a purveyor of Japanese maples that was a bit closer and more convenient than Japan, barely, and a significant proportion of Lincolnland's Japanese maples are growing in this fellow's nursery. Now the name and location isn't mentioned because if these people don't even put out a sign to indicate their business location, the Phactor shall not overly burden them with business. Actually, they do very little business first hand, operating mostly online. David-san is a bit of a weird dude, and the Phactor might suggest the 60s were a bit hard on him, except they were hard on all of us, but he has channeled all his energy into Japanese maples and he has 100 or 200 or300 or so varieties, maybe more, quite likely more, and a few thousand Japanese maple trees in his 5 acres or so of yard/nursery, and after a tough summer, he decided to move some stock with a fall sale that ended Friday (sorry, didn't know). It was a very impressive collection especially when compared to paltry selections offered by most nurseries, and as for big boxes, forget about 'em. Now all of this is part of the rule of 10 which states that no matter what wonderful thing the Phactor does for his wife, it will end up costing at least 10 times more, although actually this time it will probably be the rule of 1/10th because after having renovated our lily pond by filling it with money, the landscaping cannot possibly cost anywhere near as much, can it?? At any rate among the many larger varieties of Japanese maples, the specific purpose of this road trip, were nishiki gawa, pine-barked Japanese maples where the usually smooth, greenish, young-tree bark, turns into very corky, old-tree bark at quite a young age. Wow, It turns out they are cheaper by the dozen. So now who's going to dig all those big holes? Do you have to ask? So, grade exams or dig holes? Groan.