This afternoon, three o’clock, at sunset, I went to visit the trees in Kaivopuisto Park for one last time. The reason for ending this year so early, is a holiday trip which will bring me back only after New Year. My visits have not been that regular, anyway, sometimes only once a week, sometimes twice or three times. And there have been breaks for travels. I have been sitting on and with a group of elm trees up on the hill, with a view overlooking Harakka Island, Uunisaari and the strait Uuninsuu between them. And I have also sat on the stub of an alder on the other side of the park.
These visits to the trees in Helsinki are documented as video stills on the Research Catalogue, on a separate page, here.  (Scroll down the page for the last images). Yesterday I did my last visits to the trees in Stockholm as well, and they are documented in a similar manner in the same exposition, on another page, here. The actual material recorded of all these visits is moving images, videos, and they will be edited into rough time-lapse videos later. Now I am more concetned with the shock of how quickly time passes; one year is not that long, really.
Next year I will spend more time in Stockholm, and will probably not choose any trees to visit in Helsinki. There are my house plants to take care of, however, both at home and in my studio on Harakka Island and they are the plants I am performing with daily. I am not posing for camera with them (except the ivy, once), nor thinking of our living together that much, unless they get ill or seem to suffer somehow. They are my “house gnomes”, “hustomtar” in Swedish or “kotitonttuja” in Finnish; they demand that I return home to take care of their basic needs. But they seem to thrive without my presence, too. I probably give them too much water, sometimes…