After rain and cool weather, the forecasters called Thursday an ideal spring day.  Although the temperature hovered below 70, I had to agree.  The trees in the park were starting to green.  Spring bulbs made a nice showing:  white and yellow daffodils; red, white and pink tulips, purple wood hyacinth, yellow fritillaria.  Waves of pheasant’s eye narcissi lined the path to Strawberry Fields, punctuated by more wood hyacinth, solomon’s seal and hellebore.  Violets bloomed under the fences; set back in the dappled shade, were pansies, violas and trillium.  In the lawn surrounding Daniel Webster, the first dandelions had popped up.

Overhead, the magnolias were magnificent.  Cherry Hill earned its name; pink petals floated, the souls of the samurai, to the pink carpet below.

Bethesda Fountain was packed, and I was not the first busker there.  The player of a one-stringed Chinese instrument bowed his squeaky tunes from the bench opposite center stage.  I kept walking to my second stage, beneath the Norway maple overlooking the rowboat rental operation.

A woman started me off with a dollar, then a man, followed by 2 young women.  “Have you got time for a hula today?” I asked them.  They did not.

A high school group from Manassas, Virginia, stopped to hula.  Ten kids, lined up against the fence, waved their arms and wiggled their hips through both verses of “The Hukilau Song.”  Three of them dropped singles into my case.

A man from Oakland, California, gave me a thumbs-up and a buck.

“Say hi to my dad,” a girl said, shoving a phone in my face as she walked by.  “Hi, Dad.”

On my way into the park, I’d chatted with a chaperone of a middle school group from Boston.  Now here they were again, on their way out of the park.  “Has this group got time for a hula today?”  The lead teacher hesitated, the kids reached for the leis, and very soon I had another large group lined up for the hukilau.  “Does anyone know how to hula?” I asked.

“I do,” one of the girls said.  Her name was Estelle.

“Estelle is the kahuna,” I said.  “Follow her lead.”  At the end of the dance, the chaperone laid a fiver in my case, and took $2 change.

Two young teens asked their parents if they could dance.  They were from Rochester, NY, and one of them was having a birthday.  They giggled through their hula, after which dad tossed me a fiver, no change required.

I closed my set with “Little Grass Shack.”  With $15 in my pocket, I made my way back to Central Park West, to the subway and home.  Forecasts for an ideal spring day had been accurate.