It’s a beautiful day in New York. There are no longer big crowds in the park. Fewer than 10 people were at the Imagine Mosaic, where the guitarist sang “Let It Be.”

From a distance, it appeared there were no nuts on the chestnut tree at all, but up close I spotted a few browning golf-ball sized nuts in the upper branches, and the ground was littered with shells. I found a whole nut, shiny brown, and crushed it under my foot. The meat was white and moist, good eating for squirrels.

Sitting alone on a bench near the stairs down to the fountain, a man sat expressionless, unmoving like a statue. His head was wrapped in white gauze. Wearing a suit, sunglasses, no tie, his shirt out of his pants, legs crossed, he was a living work of art, although I was at a loss as to how to interpret him.

The accordion player was in the arcade. No other buskers were around. I set up, tuned and started my set with only a handful of people to hear me. A 5-year-old girl looked me over suspiciously. “Would you like to dance the hula?”

“She’s shy,” said her dad. I tried to lure her with a lei, made funny faces, sang funny lyrics, all of which drove her farther away.

“Not going to happen,” I said to dad. He agreed, then dropped 55 cents into my case.

Another dad and daughter, 2-3 years old, stopped to chat. I doubled the lei into a crown and put it on the little girl’s head. The only sign of a hula was the occasional bend of the knee, or wave of the arm. Dad gave me buck and said, “Sorry, she won’t dance, but you sound great.”

Three women rode into the plaza on bicycles and dismounted. One of them couldn’t take her eyes off me. “Have you got time for a hula today?” She turned her back and consulted with her friends, finally coming my way with a big smile and $3.

Later, another set of bikers, stopped to listen. These were young men from Ireland. “From the west,” one of them told me. “Near Galway.” I told him that Mrs. Ukulele’s family hailed from Tipperary.

My ukulele was falling farther and farther out of tune. I tightened the low-G string, strummed a few more chords, then twang, the string broke. I finished the song on 3 strings, then found a replacement string in my case. My old string maker, Hilo, had gone out of business; my strings now are from Aquila. I took off the broken string and replaced it as quickly as I could. New strings, once stretched, need some seasoning; right out of the package they go flat, so I had to tighten it up after – sometimes during – every song until I finished with “Little Grass Shack.”

When I sat down at the end of my set to pack up my stuff, a couple from Poland asked, “How much for the purple dancing girl?”

Ordinarily, my dancing girls, like my leis, are not for sale. But today I made an exception. “Five dollars.”

They conferred as I continued packing. The man finally pulled out a $50-dollar bill. There was only $5.55 in my case, plus $2 in starter money. I made change from my wallet, nearly doubling my daily take without playing a note.