In September, Karen and Tom’s moving and landscaping companies got a chance to thrive again.  Our first job in September was moving nephew Devon out of his apartment in Cleveland.  It was our first (and last) chance to see his apartment.  He had a tiny studio apartment in the the Statler Building on Playhouse Square.  Until we were moving him out, we had no idea he was living in this historic building.  He even had a lake view!  If you leaned just right looking out the one window, you could see a little sliver of lake between the other high-rise buildings.

Moving Devon out of the building was interesting because everything had to go down in the freight elevator and he had to reserve its use.  Fortunately Devon and his girlfriend Erin had everything all packed and ready to go when the elevator was available.  Tom and nephew Jared moved most of the heavy stuff with the rest of us carrying the lighter stuff down the hall to the elevator.  It only took us four trips down in the freight elevator to move stuff out.  Then we packed it into the small U-Haul truck Sagers rented for the day.  Two hours after arriving at the apartment everything was packed in the truck and ready to go.

The four Sagers and two Hartleys headed back to Canton to unload the truck, which took about 15 minutes.  Devon is heading to Spain to teach for a year and most of his stuff is being stored in the Sager garage.  Then we all enjoyed a hearty movers’ meal of hamburgers and fries.

Karen and Tom’s moving and landscaping has also been busy at John and Jackie’s new house.  Their house sits on the top of a slope which descends toward the back of their property.  There is about 15 feet difference between the front of the house and the walk-out basement.  Over the years the retaining walls around the house had slid down or disappeared.  Once we removed the  overgrown weeds and plants we could see where the retaining walls needed to be rebuilt.

We did some of the rebuilding with the existing rocks, but needed more rocks to build something sturdy enough to stand up for a while.  So we ordered 6,000 pounds of limestone from Semco Outdoor.  Then Tom and I spent several days building the retaining walls.  Building the walls with Tom was fun.  He did the heavy lifting and hardest digging, then we placed the rocks and adjusted sizes as needed.  It was like putting together a large, very heavy jigsaw puzzle.

The finished walls look pretty good.  We hope they will hold up well over the years.  We still have some dirt to move, but then we will be ready for some fall planting with more to follow in the spring.

Moving and landscaping are keeping us active and giving us the exercise we need.  We are thankful that our family can use us.  We love feeling useful.