On the ground, the daffs have faded, the tulips hang on, and the masses of wood hyacinth are mostly spent, looking like the spiky skeletons of fish.  The first red rose opens low on the bush.  In the canopy, the trees are green.  Both chestnuts are in bloom.  At Cherry Hill, above salmon and white azalea, a giant paulownia is bursting with purple flowers.  For years I’d seen these trees blooming along the Henry Hudson, looking like purple chestnut trees.  I looked up the name a few years ago.  They were named for Anna Paulowna, daughter of Tsar Paul I of Russia.

Center stage at Bethesda Fountain looked like mine until I saw the old man with the accordion, sitting on the bench.  He wasn’t playing; he appeared to be picking lint from his base buttons.  “Are you done, or are you still playing?” I asked him.  He didn’t seem to understand, or maybe he was hard of hearing.  I asked again.

“One o’clock,” he said.

I went to the maple for 20 minutes, where I made nothing, returned at 1 and set up at the fountain.  The old man kept pumping out chords, while I waited.  At last he noticed me and stopped.

I continued my set where I’d left off.  The fountain was crowded today.  A large group of pre-teens from Central Islip, having picnicked on the lawn, started running around, from water’s edge to the arcade, in front of which the big bubble man competed with 2 snake handlers on segways for their attention.  “Has this group got time for a hula today?”

The leader of the group, a rather rumpled 50-something, shrugged.  Soon I had a line of kids squealing with laughter on their way to the hukilau.  Between verses, they passed the leis to another line of dancers.  Afterward, one of the kids came running back to me with a fiver from the leader.

I saw a woman recording me, so I gave her a good show, for which I received $2.  An old man walked by and tossed me a buck.  Two women slowed as they passed, then stopped 20 yards away.  They were sorting through their wallets.  One of them returned with 4 tightly folded singles.

Toward the end of my set, a 20-something from San Francisco danced a hula and walked away.  The same happened with 3 young women from South Carolina.  My 90 minutes up, I sang “Little Grass Shake,” sat down and started packing up.

“Would you mind?” said a 60-something man in a white shirt and name tag (Mike) on a lanyard around his neck.  “I’ve got a school group here from Chicago, and I’d like to get the teachers dancing for the kids.”

I took out my leis, set up the yellow dancing girl, and spread the currency out in my case.  Standing, I sang out “Honolulu Eyes” until Mike led his group to me and stopped.  With a word to the kids about an opportunity for blackmail, he called out 4 teachers.  Dressed in the same black tee shirts as the kids, they donned leis and, after very brief instruction, lined up to dance to “The Hukilau Song.”  The kids howled as the teachers broke ranks, flapped their arms, spun in circles, and finally united like the Rockettes for a high-kicking finale.

Mike, grinning, handed me a fiver, and one of the kids tossed in a buck.  That 6 from Chicago, added to the 12 from my 90 minute set, boosted me to highly respectable $18.