Behind the northern benches at the entrance to the park, lantana and celosia are having a second blooming.  The wood anemone derby, in which the two plants compete for the number of open flowers, is tied at 3.  The south-facing catalpa pods, dangling like string beans, are reddening into ripeness.

As I set up at Bethesda Fountain, the cowboy introduced himself as Colin.  I gave him my card.

My first dancers were a young Bulgarian couple, who seemed delighted to be asked to hula.  They put a dollar in my case as I turned to entice a toddler in a straw hat with my baby lei.  He threw it on the ground, at which time his parents led him away.

Another little boy seemed inclined to dance.  His mom gave him a dollar for me.  He dropped it in my case, then grabbed a lei and ran back to his mom.  He put on the lei and started to walk away.  I decided not to run after him; as it turned out, his mom walked the lei back to me.

One of the snake boys came down from the terrace in front of the arcade.  He started hustling all around me.  After collecting some money for photos with the snake, he approached me.  “How about some Beatle songs?” he said.

“How about you take your snake back where you came from,” I said.  “I’m working here.”

A family from Orlando stopped to let their little girl dance.  “I know how to hula,” she said.  “We were just in Hawaii.  The boys do this,” she waved her arms to the left, “and the girls do this,” waving her arms to the right.

“Since your brother won’t dance,” I said, “you’ll have to dance both parts.”

After the dance, her dad and I discussed Hurricane Irma.  “That’s why we’re here,” he told me, folding up a fiver and laying it in my case.

Two young men, with back packs and hiking boots, slowed to study my solar-powered hula girls.  One of them bent down to get a closer look.  When he got up, he gave me a buck.

A couple from the bench, having finished their lunch, also chipped in a buck.

A large man with a crew cut waited for me to finish “All of Me.”  His name was Carl and he engaged me in a wide-ranging conversation about ukes.  “Do you play?”

“A little,” he said.  I offered him my uke and he proceeded to tune it before plucking out a ditty.  He handed it back and told me he ran a music school.  “I’ll be seeing a lot of you,” he said.  “I come to the park a lot.  Play me a tune.”

I played 8 bars of “I Wonder Where My Hula Girl Has Gone,” then switched to “Making Love Ukulele Style.”  “That was written by Dean Martin,” I told him.

“He did lots of interesting musical things,” Carl told me, then he walked away.  He didn’t give me any money, but he’d tuned my uke perfectly; it sounded better than it had all summer.

After Carl, no one else came by.  I exited the park with $10 in my pocket, and a well-tuned uke on my back.