It’s hard to tell whether the appearance of plant life in the park began while my back was turned, or, overwhelmed by the variety, I just hadn’t taken everything in. How could I have missed the English daisies tucked into a corner at the entrance to the park? They were resplendent with color, not a white one in the lot. The blooms pushed up only a few inches from a knot of ragged leaves; they looked like mutant dandelions. The ferns, however, could very well have unfolded overnight, as could the columbine under the spent magnolia.

I met Rakeem along the path and he asked about my leg. I showed him the ankle brace I would be wearing for another month. To his look of concern, I responded cheerfully, “If I have to live with this level of pain for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t be the only one.”

He laughed. And I limped toward center stage, which Rakeem had just vacated. The cowboy was 120 degrees to my left around the fountain, shortly to be followed by the accordion player 120 degrees to my right.

A tall woman with fire red hair ran up and stood beside me while her husband took a picture. They were from Greece. I mentioned Monemvasia, where my wife and I had visited a few years back. Delighted, they mentioned their home town, which, alas, I’d never heard of. “Kalimera,” I said, taking their dollar, “Mahalo.”

A middle-aged woman with no English gave me a dollar. I put a lei around her neck and broke into “The Hukilau Song,” but after moving her arms for 4 bars she stopped and awkwardly stood there. She seemed really unhappy. I stopped playing, retrieved the lei and let her return to her seat.

Three teenagers from Indiana put on leis and did a creditable hula together, along with some rehearsed moves, like holding their noses as they dove underwater, and forming a heart with their fingers at the mention of kanes and wahinis singing songs about love. They each chipped in 50 cents.

Another trio, this one from Argentina, rocked out in a syncopated rhythm I tried to follow on my uke. They gave me a dollar. Then a duo from Paris did the hula. Theirs was a more languorous dance; one of them seemed almost to fall asleep while the other slid around her. When they were done, I took back the leis and they walked off.

It was getting really noisy. Since I started my set, a guitarist and his friend playing the wooden crate had set up opposite the accordion player, a soprano was belting out an aria from a niche in the wall forming the western stairs, the one-stringed instrument man was 180 degrees directly behind me, and on the terrace between the fountain and the arcade two guys had taken their pet pythons out of two shopping bags. From a distance, I thought the snakes were balloons; at another time, glancing their way, one of the python’s yellow belly looked like the brass tubing of a sousaphone wrapped around its owner’s body.

All in all, it seemed like a good time to call it a day.