New Trees

I hope everyone has had a great week. The weather has warmed up a bit the last few days. However it looks like another artic front with some chances of snow are in the forecast for the next couple of days. I know that the snow is not what everyone wants to see however it will be very beneficial to the golf course as things have gotten really dry over the last several weeks with the high winds and the snow will protect the turf from the bitter cold temperatures. Today we were able to take advantage of the nice weather and were able to plant two new trees on the golf course. One on #6 and one on #1. Both of these trees were replacement trees due to the two from last year that didn't make it. I have attached a picture below of the new Red Oak on #6. Next week I am fortunate enough to get out of the cold weather for a bit as I will be attending our annual national Golf Course Industry Education Conference in Orlando, Florida. I will be able to sit in on some great education seminars and I will also try and bring some sunshine and warm weather back with me. My crew over the next week will continue to stay busy finishing up the last bit of painting and doing some much needed organizing and cleaning in the shop. As temperatures get warm enough we will be out continuing on irrigation installation between #6 & #7, drainage on #17 fairway, installing stones along the cart paths on #14, and doing some more dead tree removals. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Up and Down Temperatures

The extremely cold weather looks like it is going to continue over the next couple of days at least. What a change it is this morning from yesterday! Yesterday our high temperature was close to 60 degrees and today our high is forecast to be around 15 degrees with wind chills around -15 degrees, a huge difference in just 12 hours of time. I have had a few questions about how the golf course is fairing through these extremely cold temperatures that we have had over the last month or so. My gut feeling is that everything looks and seems to be OK at this point. However the more ups and downs we have and the more traffic we have on the dormant Zoysia grass fairways causing injury the more susceptible we are to winter kill. This is one of those touchy issues and is a lot like gambling in the Casino. You can roll the dice and continue to take your chances with cart damage which is what we are doing or you can eliminate cart traffic on the fairways and go to cart path only. At this time however I don't think we have any areas that are showing signs of damage from cart traffic. We will continue to monitor the situation as the winter season continues. One thing I would like everyone's help with especially with the cold temperatures we have been having is honor our "cart path only signs" that we do have on a few of our fairways. We are doing this to allow some of these areas to recover from all the golf cart stress that they incurred in 2013. Hopefully with your help and some help from "Mother Nature" this spring these areas will recover quickly for the 2014 season. It looks like the beginning of the week the crew will be inside continuing to work on some projects hopefully finishing up most of them. As the temperatures improve over the week we will move outside and continue on the irrigation installation between #6 & #7, installing stone along cart paths, and removal of a few more dead trees around the golf course. I hope you all had a great weekend and were able to get outside yesterday and enjoy some nice warm weather at your homes or here on the golf course!

Another Artic Blast!!

It seems we are in a weather pattern where we get decent weather for a few days with bearable temperatures and then a blast of really cold weather with unbearable temperatures comes in for a few days and this week looks to be no different. It looks as if today's high of the mid 30s is going to be the warm one of the week because tomorrow they are saying we may set a new record low and wind chills could be in the -25 degree range! Today we are going to be outside continuing to work on the irrigation installation between #6 & #7. We are also going to be continue working on removing the dead trees on #13 behind the green where the large Sycamore tree fell during the storm in June of last year. Also we will be doing some burning today of some brush piles that we have accumulated around the property from our tree work. I hope everyone has had a good week so far and stay warm over the next few days!

Warm Weekend Ahead

Well it looks like over the next couple of days the temperatures are going to be warming up. We don't get very many January weather weekends with highs in the 50's and maybe even the 60's if we get lucky. The staff has been very busy this week working on various projects around the golf course and shop. We have pretty much completed our staining and painting of the enter/exit posts and rope stakes. We will put the newly redone ones out closer to spring as we the golfing season approaches. We have also been busy working on the area between #4 and #5 thinning out the brush and limb up the trees and doing some cleaning up. I am excited with how the area looks and I think it will really dress up the area giving it a more maintained look along with helping with sunlight and airflow as well. We will be burning the piles of brush once the winds die down a bit. Also we started adding in the irrigation heads this week between #6 and #7. Like I have said before I believe these irrigation heads will really help this area be a more consistent playing surface during the year as there is a lot of golfing traffic in this area. I have attached a photo of the area between #4 and 5 and of the irrigation install between #6 and 7. I hope you all have a great weekend and will come out and enjoy some nice weather on the golf course. GO BRONCOS!!!

Back Outside Finally!!

Looks like we are going to get some warmer temperatures for the upcoming week which will be a welcoming sign after the last couple of deep freeze. Sunday the weather turned out nice and there were a few guys out on the golf course taking advantage of it. We still had some areas on the golf course that were unplayable due to the snow and ice still on the ground. This week the maintenance staff is going to be busy finishing up some projects along with starting on some new ones on the golf course. We are planning to finish the drainage on #17 fairway and finish the tree work on the hill between #4 and #5. Also we are going to start the irrigation project between #6 and #7 of adding some additional heads in this area to help with turf conditions during the heat of the summer. Another project we are going to do this week is take down all 18 metal tee signs and posts around the golf course and repaint and refurbish them. They have gotten faded over time from the sun and water so we are going to give them a fresh look. I have attached a picture of an example of one below that we are going to do. If the ground is thawed enough we will be installing some more stones along some cart path edges and hopefully will get the cups changed on the greens. I hope everyone has a great week!

Arctic Blast

Man was it cold this morning! My truck told me it was -11 as an actual temperature I don't think I have ever seen that before. Needless to say we are in the middle of a big time arctic cold blast that is going to be around here for a few days. The good news we got some snow cover to help insulate the ground and protect the turf prior to the cold arriving. I would say we got between 3-4" of snow depending on if it drifted or not with the winds. The maintenance staff is going to continue to work inside on the tee markers, enter/exit posts, etc. over the next couple of days until the temps warm up a bit and get out of the danger zone. I hope all of you are staying warm and have a great week.

Cold Blast!!

WOW is it cold today! My truck on the way in this morning at 6:30am said 0 degrees that is cold. It looks like this cold front giving us these really cold days is going to hang around for a week or so at least. We received about an 1.5" or so of snow with some areas having a little more due to the drifts from the 20 mph. winds over night. The staff is busy shoveling the parking lot and sidewalks at the clubhouse this morning while trying to stay warm. We will be busy continuing servicing of some of our carts and equipment, refinishing the enter/exit stakes, work around the shop cleaning and organizing, grinding reels, and doing our annual winter training with our staff (i.e. watching safety videos on our equipment). I hope everyone had a safe and Happy New Year!