Early mornings

It doesn't get better than this, it was a beautiful morning.

Update

Rain - last Friday/Saturday the course received 2.75 inches of rain

Cart Paths - the paving contractor finished up today, we will spend the next few weeks backfilling the paths with soil and seeding these areas.

All of the paths will get backfilled with soil.

Aerification - We aerified all the tees yesterday, the tees and fairways will not be aerified again until next year.  We will be aerifying the greens once more this fall on October 28.

New tees - starting in October we will begin constructing 6 new gold tees.  Soil will be added to grade, then we will be sodding the surfaces.

Bridge - today we added shingles to the flat bridge over the Blanchard.  I got two comments this past week that golfers were starting to slip on the bridge.

 

Finally something to write about

We finally have a little more going on that just normal maintenance - something I can post about.  Today we verticut and topdressed all the greens.  This will aid in keeping things firm and smooth through the fall. 

We will do this 2 more times before we aerify again on October 28.

Today also began the week of paving our cart paths around the back of the clubhouse.  The paving crew start by prepping and cleaning all the paths.  They also tore out the asphalt pad by the proshop, this will be paved tomorrow morning.

The Grounds staff finished edging the paths that are going to be paved. 

If the weather holds, this project will take all week.  If we get some wet weather like they are forecasting, we may have to finish up next week.

Committed employees

One of my employees on staff here is Wayne Bartchlett.  He has been working for the the Grounds department for over 40 years and still going strong.  He is always the first one here and will do whatever you ask of him.  He will typically mow greens on the weekends often starting at 5:00am while the others start at 6:00.

I caught a picture of him last week, he was mowing #13 green, the last green he had to mow - it was only 7:00 am.

Beaver activity

A few weeks ago, I noticed a tree alongside the river that had some interesting markings on it.  After looking closer I discovered we have a beaver in the area.

I saw a beaver swimming upstream earlier this year, it must still be around.