Tale of the Japanese Maple

Since Kristen & I have been together he's talked about how much he loves Japanese Maples

It looks like a dark red maple tree but with one major difference. The leaves look like this:

What does that resemble??

In comparison to other trees you might purchase from a garden centre, these trees can be quite expensive. The cheapest we found was a very small sized one for $100

Yesterday Kristen asked if I wanted to go to the Walmart garden centre "for a look" which usually means there's something he has on his mind that he wants to price out. By the way, we've already started our backyard gardening/landscaping for this year.

So we go...and we see this last Japenese Maple. All the other trees are priced between $40-$100 but we can't find a price tag on this anywhere. I go to find help, Kristen stays with the tree....then a stranger comes along inquiring about the tree. Kristen tells him that his wife is actually gone to find out the price of it. As I'm walking back the stranger shows up with a large cart and goes oh I thought you guys might have needed this....all the while I'm telling Kristen, that the girl has to come back to scan the tag. Kristen thinks the stranger was coming to take the tree but Kristen was "on guard"

The tag has no barcode we notice, so Kristen takes it off the tree and I go to the front to ask the girl to look it up by item number. She can't find it. Oh and the stranger has followed me too cause he's "curious about the price" and "if it's a good price I'll see if they have any at another walmart" so I'm waiting...the stranger is lurking....

And she finally finds something on her book that must resemble the item number, and she says "it's $59.97" I immediately go, I'll take it. I give Kristen the thumbs up to bring us the tree, she scans me in and the stranger has walked out of the garden centre so fast that, as we're going to our car he's speeding out of the parking lot :) He knows he just missed out on an awesome deal.

To be truthful, I think she made a mistake. Unless Walmart really does have the lowest prices on everything. Either way, we got a great deal and our backyard finally has Kristen's favourite tree. On the drive home, I was totally cracking up laughing at the Japenese Maple fiasco and how if we weren't a two-man team the lurking stranger definitely would have taken "our tree!!" All's fair in shopping wars :) Once Kristen has it all planted up I'll post pics. Happy Monday!