Day 29- Place of Honor

My great-grandmother’s Boston fern stand is the highest-status location in my house for my houseplants.  A ginger jar sat upon it in the house I grew up in, and I never knew it was my great-grandmother’s until my mother gave it to me many years ago.  For a long time, I did put Boston ferns on it, but since we moved here twenty-three years ago, it has mostly been the home for my most beautiful spider plant. Any plant that I acquired during my years as a first grade teacher had to understand that it would be watered every Saturday morning- no matter what.  If it didn’t adapt to my schedule and didn’t mind occasionally skipping a Saturday, well- the results weren’t pretty!  Spider plants and pothos have been the most cooperative!

Awhile ago (maybe ten years?) an ivy plant came to live at my house.  I think it is a grape ivy, and frankly I didn’t give it much chance of making it.  I have unpleasant memories of dusty, unhealthy ivy in my childhood dining room, and, anytime I’ve had ivy, it didn’t adapt well to my rules.  Well, the grape ivy has thrived!  And I was starting to love it more than as much as my most beautiful spider plant! It sat on a sofa table behind the couch and grew so huge it was hard to walk through without bending the vines back.  Last summer, I decided to move it to my front hallway where there was more room.  And less light.  I was also gone for six weeks, because of the birth of my second grandchild.

When I came back, I noticed it looking a little leggy, but didn’t really examine it closely until today.  It’s not doing well! My grape ivy! I felt so bad that, after I trimmed it back, I removed my big spider plant from its place of honor on the Boston fern stand and replaced it with my poor ivy!  My spider plant is now in the greenhouse window, which is not as ideal a location as it sounds- over the kitchen sink- not very prestigious….

Things have changed since the ivy left its first location in the family room.  The fern stand is now located beside the new TV and has the job of making the room look less TV-focused.  The ivy will have to adjust to life a slight bit further away from the window than it liked and beside a speaker.  I’ll keep you posted…

By the way- in case you wondered about my problem with over-exposed photos yesterday- make a guess! It is such a common beginner’s mistake that I am embarrassed to report it.

If you guessed Exposure Compensation Button, you are right.  OMG.

I have been practicing with Back Button Focus, which has my whole hand-positioning thing off.  The Nikon D5000 has dials that do multiple jobs, because it is a small entry level DSLR.  At some point I accidentally turned the mode dial thing- whatever its called- out of Manual to Aperture Priority- and then back again, because I kept rotating that instead of the command dial.  At that point if I hit the Exposure Compensation button it would, well, adjust exposure COMPENSATION and not the exposure for that particular photo!  If this makes no sense, don’t worry about it.