The Helicopters Have Landed

The dry and warm spring has caused the silver maple "helicopter" seeds to begin falling very early this year.  They began to rain down in the high winds this week, and really made a mess of things.  It is actually almost a month early for them, last year they didn't start falling until the end of May!


These seed pods are a major problem for the grounds staff and golfers every spring.  Instead of going about our business in the morning and getting everything mowed for play, we have to blow off the greens, tees, an fairways before mowing which consumes a lot of time and labor.  For golfers, the problem is obvious, if a green isn't freshly blown off, they are in the way of putting.  We will do our best to keep the course clean, and the greens puttable. 

Besides blowing helicopters, we also completed a project that we have been putting off for too long.  Monday and Tuesday we installed irrigation on the new blue tee on #13.  Last years wet summer allowed us to put this project off, but the dry spring we are having forced us to get it done so that we don't have to stretch two hoses from the twelfth fairway to hand water it.  In two days we were able to lay all the pipe, install two new sprinklers, and wire everything to the irrigation satellite box.  The best part is that everything worked on the first try!

Tamping the soil on top of the pipe to reduce settling in the trenches.