Pranksters and Progress

I have a begonia plant in my container garden.  It once had three colors of begonias, many years ago when it was given to me as a present upon leaving Freshwater school.  I think it was Freshwater, ten years ago?  There is only one begonia color left, a nice orangey-red.

About a week ago, I noticed a new flower on this begonia.  I thought, "Wow, look at how it is aging.  I never noticed how the color bled away from the flower, leaving just a ring of color on the outer edges."     Check it out:

I thought this was pretty cool.     But unfortunately, when I touched the flower, it fell off.   I was pretty bummed, but knowing how long begonia flowers last, I set it in the pot so I could show it to someone, if the chance came up. This picture is after the flower had been there for a week!

A few days later, my neighbor came buy. I stopped her, and asked her to come check out this cool flower on my begonia.  As I told her about my theory on how the color had changed, she started cracking up. Soon she confessed that SHE had placed the flower there, as a practical joke. I just laughed.  Very, very cool joke. And even cooler that I fell for it and created this whole rational story of how the flower could have come from my plant!  Yes, I am the poster child for "Gullible."  Hey, the other day, I believed my Idaho friend Joe's fable about the new Republican party that had a teddy bear for a mascot.

Changing the subject....Progress!!   I have finished my coding/note-taking from my 30 interview transcripts. This took a very long time--a pretty laborious task, but the final writing of my data findings/conclusions will be pretty smooth from here on out.   I have my four main categories of cards (the colors), and I have I don't know how many hundreds of cards.  

Each card has a quote or summary of a sentence from an interview.   In the upper right corner is a number. The first part refers to which interview it is.  The second part tells what page it is from. This way, I can find the original text in the interview transcript very easily, when needed.  So, 27-8 would be interview 27, page 8.

There's a LOT of data cards.  I can't get over how many cards.  There's a part of me that wants to throw them all up in the air and let them rain down into a pile.    Maybe when I'm done with the thing, I can do that.   :) 

At any rate, I am very, very thrilled to begin the final sorting process tomorrow.    (okay, it's after midnight right now, so technically it is tomorrow already. So I  will say "after sleeping").  I take each card, read it, and put it into a pile.  As I sort cards into like piles, I make labels for the piles with new cards, to help me put cards into the right piles.   I may sort the cards several times, until I am really happy with the groupings and the labels. Then I take the piles, and write. 

During this whole research process, which began in March with the very first interviews, through turning the audio tapes into typed transcripts, and then through the underlining, highlighting, and recording quotes onto cards, I have been creating codes, labels, and groupings in my mind and on paper. I've thought about sorting this data since the moment I began.   It is going to be quite cool to see how it all lays out!!   

Last week, I was fortunate to have a high school friend hang out for a few days while he worked on independent study stuff.  Was very nice to have the company!  He was camera shy, though.....

To end this post, here's a couple more beauties from my container garden. These really were attached to the plants!  I caught them during a brief break in the rain, when the sun came out to turn the nasturtium leaves a nearly translucent green.  :)

Vibrant green Nasturtium leaves with rain drops hanging on the edges like mercury beads.

Nasturtium flower

Pansies are the epitome of joy in flower form, I think.