Breaking the monotony of green, red fuschia flowers poked out of reddish green leaves, and elsewhere white astilbe and a yellow daisy-like flower with a black center caught the eye. The white, 4-petaled dogwood floated above the button seller. Moms and their babies were spread out on blankets in the shade. The clump of pink roses by the road to Cherry Hill looked none the worse for the heavy rain storms last night. Forty feet up, clusters of white catalpa flowers formed in the sun.

Bethesda Fountain was closed; the Central Park Conservancy had covered it with tents for one of their multi-day fund raisers. So I hiked over the hill to the east and descended to my spot on the path under the maple, which I had to myself for about 30 minutes, before first one, then a second caricaturist set up their stools and easels. The mature mulberry tree in front of me had already set fruit, while the two nearby juveniles still held onto their fuzzy white flowers.

A couple with a kid in a carriage stopped to dance. They told me they had lived in Hawaii for 11 years. Out of the carriage, the little girl wobbled to me, refused the lei, but managed to prance around with delight. Another mom and carriage stopped in the shade to watch. She also gave me a buck.

A woman with purple hair walked by, heard the music and started to dance. I got a lei around her neck and off we went to the hukilau. Her companion took a picture, peeled a dollar from his bankroll. At the end of the dance, the woman took her lei off and put it around my neck, giving me a peck on the cheek. “That’s the way they do it in Hawaii, don’t they?”

Maggie the dog came by, with her owner, Marcel. Maggie loves to sit in front of me and watch while I sing. She also draws her own crowd, as if nothing were so unusual as a dog with a taste for uke music. While people took Maggie’s picture, I continued to strum through chord sequences and talked to Marcel. A kid of 5 or 6, after petting the dog with permission, tossed a quarter into my case.

“I won’t be seeing you for a while,” I told Marcel. “I’m off to California for a month. Bye-bye, Maggie, see you in July.”

Mondays are notoriously bad for buskers. At $3.25, it was a little worse than usual, but anything more than $2.70, my round trip carfare, puts me in the black. With such a low bar, and with the Aloha Spirit, success is not hard to achieve.