Back from the July 4^th break, and the stella d’oro daylilies are as fat as figs.  I can’t identify the major new plantings at the Women’s Gate; one has dark pink chive-like flowers and long, smooth-edged pointy leaves, the other has similar leaves and light pyramidal flowers opening pinkish-purple, like an artichoke.

The first signs of the blight have appeared on the chestnut.  I saw little, if any, blight on the second tree across the path.  On the other side of the road, the catalpa pods hang like 18-inch-long string beans.

Center stage again was mine.  Alexis, a toddler of 2 or so, danced a hula.

A 50-ish couple was hanging around; the woman wanted to dance.  After Alexis was shown how to tip the busker, she did.  She knew all the moves to “The Hukilau Song,” which attracted a crowd.  After the dance she told me that she and her husband had a ukulele/hula act in California.  “There he is,” she pointed to a barrel-chested man who was walking toward us.  He had long, gray hair and wore a beautiful aloha shirt.  I handed him my uke.  He made it sing with a softly voiced Hawaiian folk tune, in a way my plink-a-plink style of strumming could never do.  They were good for a fiver.

A tourist family stopped to dance.  While a young teen stumbled his way to the hukilua, his family laughed and snapped photos.  Dad dropped a fiver; grandma chipped in a buck.

While setting up today, a couple with a young child had been sitting at the fountain next to me. The child was too shy to hula.  As my act got underway, they’d wandered off.  Now they were back.  Having seen others do it, the kid was ready to hula.  A good observer, she needed no lessons.

.

Three strapping boys, maybe 16-18, just had to hula.  They were from Florida, in NYC with a mom, who watched from the shade, inured to their nonsense.  The hula was a shambles, and when they were done they came up with 5 singles among them.

Throughout my set, a number of people came by to drop a dollar or two.  An Argentine bombshell in her early 20’s danced the hula for her friends.  In addition to a dollar, she gave me 3 pieces of Lindt chocolate.  A family from Kentucky stopped to hula.  When the young boy of 8-9 faltered, dad took a lei and danced alongside for support.

At $29, it was another high dollar day.  On my way out of the park, I opened a piece of chocolate.  It had melted in the sun; I had to lick it off the wrapper.