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Thanks for the suggestion. Yes I've tested my film and paper, and have even used Phil's tests for the palm, both yield the same results.
No back yard here, and I should have been more clear that most of the time the style of photography I enjoy most is closeup details. So say I have an orchid, window lit in soft light, no direct sunlight. I've tried to use the incidence meter for measurement, to take a photograph of the orchid, for some reason I end up with what I feel is a pretty thin neg, that when printed on the intended paper, just lacks horribly in detail.
What I mean by that is where I expect the leaves to be a beautiful light white (zone VIII), I get closer to a middle gray value (Zone VI), with the mouth of the orchid just way too dark, where I indent IT to be at Zone VI-VII.
So I am guessing that either:
a- Something about my metering is horribly wrong.
b- Something about how I compensate for bellow extension is horribly wrong, and it's affecting my negative's exposure.
Generally when I measure the light on the orchid, I put the meter next to the orchid on the brightest part of the image and measure. Then to get a measurement for the inside of the orchid's 'mouth', I put the meter behind the flower to cause a shadow, since the mouth is too small to get reading from. Perhaps I should be using my spot meter?
To measure bellows extension, I measure from the front plane of my lens mount, to the back plane of the camera where the negative mag goes in. From what I've read this is should be right since the measurement of the light is from the center of the lens to the focus point; the negative.
Typically my extention is about 12-14 inches with a 320mm lens, so I am pretty dang close to this thing.
Sorry if my questions seem silly, but I am patiently trying to knock off the little mistakes I'm making in my measurements to make sure I have that down right, so I can move on to looking at anything else I might be doing wrong.
Perhaps a closeup of an orchid is just more complicated than other subjects and I ought to work with something simpler, like a chair by a window in bright sunlight? 
R
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