Nina

Three years on one. The grid genuinely does not feel like foam, it collapses under a point load and stays flat everywhere else, so your shoulder sinks and your ribs do not, which is the thing you are actually asking about. What nobody warns you about is the weight. It is awkward to move, awkward to rotate, and if you ever need to get it up a narrow stairwell you will need two people who like you.

Whatever you choose, export a set of finished JPEGs alongside the raws. Editing decisions live in a database or a sidecar file and both of those are software-specific, so the day you switch tools you keep the negatives and lose the prints unless you did that.

Daily watering in a well-draining mix also flushes nutrients out the bottom constantly. In containers I feed at quarter strength with almost every watering rather than full strength weekly, and deficiencies mostly stopped.

Skimmed milk powder and Greek yoghurt got me most of the way for about a year. Not glamorous, no shaker bottle, no branding, works fine.

Second this, but use actual horticultural grit rather than decorative pebbles. Big pebbles just create dark humid gaps, which is a gnat hotel.

Second-order problem: it is warm. Fine on a cold cabin, unpleasant on a full flight with the heat up. I carry it and use it maybe two flights in three.

Watch the watering interval now that light has dropped. Less light means slower water use, and 12 days at the old spot might be 18 days at the new one. Yellowing from the edge inward with soft petioles can also be too much water in low light, which looks almost identical to a light adjustment.

The drift is guaranteed without a hard switch. We literally say 'switching' out loud and change language mid-sentence. Sounds silly, prevents the whole failure.

Peace lilies also tell you their water status very clearly by drooping, so use that rather than a schedule while the root system is small. Water when it just begins to droop, and do not let it sit in a saucer.

Cheap thing that helped me a lot: a small microfibre cloth. Wipe the inside of the fly before you take it down in the morning. Ninety seconds, and it stops the shake-off shower that soaks everything you've just packed.

Home development changes the maths more than anything else. Black and white at home is genuinely simple: a changing bag, a tank, two chemicals and a thermometer, and after the initial outlay you are somewhere around the cost of the film alone. Colour at home is possible but it wants tighter temperature control and most people go back to the lab. If you shoot black and white and scan with a digital camera and a macro lens you may already own, the per-roll cost drops enough to change the decision.

One thing that genuinely shortens the sulk: transplant on a cloudy afternoon or in the evening rather than a bright morning, and water in immediately. Gives them a whole night to settle before the first real demand on their roots.

Before spending three times the price, try moving. Busy background at a portrait distance is usually a subject-to-background separation problem rather than an optical one, and two steps forward with your subject and ten steps of background behind them does more for the look than any glass. Then if you still want the lens, at least you know it is the lens.

Unpotted it. About a third of the roots were brown and came away in my hand. The rest looked fine. Repotted into a bark mix.

Pothos is about the most forgiving plant in the house and I have repotted them in every month of the year without drama. If it were a calathea or a maranta I would be more careful about timing.