Getting Closer to Home | The Survival Gardener

I am still in a hotel room by the airport, waiting on a flight.

Now, however, my wife, my eldest and the baby are home in Florida. Early this week I bought the last two tickets for an expatriation flight to New York. They got in safely, spent the night at a cool hotel, then got on a flight the next morning to FLL and made it home without incident.

That leaves eight of us here.

On Monday we have a charter plane – with 8 seats – coming to get us and take us off to Puerto Rico. If I had not sent some of the family first, we would have had to pay a lot more for a flight. If all goes well with our flight and tropical storms don’t get in the way, we will spend Monday night in PR, then head home to Fort Lauderdale the next day. I am tempted to spend more time in Puerto Rico so I can meet some local gardeners, but I think I’d have a family revolt on my hands if I did so.

Also, moving around during this pandemic is very difficult, especially for a large family. The charter plane was sent at a reduced price by a good friend of mine. The cost of this entire trip back is still brutally expensive, but some friends have kicked in some cash to get us home, so a little of the edge was taken off.

I cannot wait to get back to Florida, stop the financial bleeding, and plant a fall garden. My friend Karen is starting some seedlings for us and I look forward to being an American again, with little first world blessings like air conditioning, hot water, and Taco Bell.

That is, if I can still afford Taco Bell after all this. Fingers firmly crossed.

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