What do you do when it rains?

A rain event like this morning gives us an opportunity to do some things around the facility that maybe have not been completed for a while or some regular maintenance on equipment.  This includes cleaning equipment with our power washer/steam cleaner. sharpening blades, check equipment fluids, making green sand, cleaning off our flat building roof from debris which clog up the down spouts and general straightening/ clean up.  If its a long rain event for 3-4 hours, we do our work and then begin to send staff home based on newest employees first.  In some cases, the regular staff chose to go home as well if they need to catch up on their work or home.

We also go on the course to check drain lines and see how the course is responding to the rainfall to give us an idea on when we can open up the facility.

Nick cleaning equipment.

Brown sand waiting to be dyed into green sand.

Tom on the roof cleaning debris from down spouts and roof to prevent water from coming into the builidng.

Weather Wins

The weather won today's round.  1.66" did some damage to our left bunker on #16.  We will have to make a slight adjustment above the bunker to move the water around the bunker for the future.  The mud will be scraped out and removed and new soil will be placed in the rut on the bank in the next couple of days when we can get out onto the area with doing additional damage.  #9 had a small amount of mud wash onto the green but overall there was no damage to the right bunker that was completed that morning.  We had trenched the two left bunkers to insure that water could drain out of them and everything looks great.  We have not been able to check out our trenches to see if they were full of mud.

  


Below is a comparison of the before and after of #16!

The old bunker complex above on #16.

The new complex finished as of Friday on #16.

4.35" and counting in the last 10 days

Well, we always need the rain and our lakes are full.  The lake fill has been kept off so far this spring which is good but we are very wet going into a predicted very warm forecast over the next few days.
I do not expect any serious issues from the heat.  It will help dry us down to where we can get the property cleaned up and mowed over the next few days.

We've been able to maintain the facility fairly well over the period considering the amount of water we have received but the wet conditions are finally preventing us from getting some pretty important areas of the golf course mowed.   I'm hoping the rain is not too heavy tonight(Thursday) which might allow us to get the fairways mowed by Saturday or Sunday.  One thing that experience has taught me is that mowing and damaging turf during conditions that are wet is viewed upon more negatively than golfers playing in taller grass conditions for an extra day or two.  We will remain patient and remind our staff to do the same. 

Our crew has been thrown off of their normal rhythm over the last week or two but they have stepped up and worked in the rain as needed.  Our dryer has been busy helping to dry clothes over the last few days as we have been in and out of the rain.  Our new staff have been doing well and we've been training them on various jobs throughout the property so we can continue to provide you with great conditions.

Our ornamental planting schedules are a bit behind and the tennis court clay work has fallen behind because of the wet, soft conditions of the courts.  We were well ahead of schedule to have the tennis courts prepared for play this week but 8-10 days of rain has dashed those hopes.  As the courts dry this weekend, I hope to get the remaining clay laid and the courts lined early in the week and then hand off the courts to Vince and the tennis staff for the summer.