"....and when it rains on your parade look up instead of down. Without rain there would be no rainbow" - Gilbert K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English author, poet, playwright, and philosopher.  I have no idea about the things he wrote, what he wrote or why he wrote it but the above quote leads me to believe he was a 'glass half-full' type of guy.   So far June 2011 (not including the rain pouring outside my window pane right now) is at 3.9" of precipitation and the monthly average is just under 3".  From April 1st of 2011 through today we've received approximately 11.6" of precipitation which puts us about 3.25" ahead of our average for the months of April, May and June.  I provide this information because I feel you might be interested, because you might want to understand why you have to mow your lawns at home like every other day almost and why the grass keeps piling up outside on the golf course.

So we've spent more time in our bunkers, albeit not quite enough.  The weather is the single determining factor in how much or how little we can accomplish in a day.  Thankfully the grounds crew is versatile, veteran and enthusiastic about performing several tasks in a day or over many days and for that I can't thank them enough.  Here's a couple of pics of what we've been working on.

Cesar Chavez is shown here installing new drainage in a fairway bunker

This bunker required renovation after an irrigation pipe (that should never have been in there in the first place) heaved out of the ground this winter and burst during the startup of our irrigation system. Cesar and Nicacio Hernandez should have the drain in today and the sand will follow shortly after.

 We are continuing 'rip' edging our bunkers on Highland and Woodland

That's a pretty big difference.  Amazing how much they encroach if you're not careful

Jr., Angel and Barrett did a nice job returning this bunker line back to its original design.  We will keep doing this as long as it takes to recapture lost lines and bunker space.  Once they are all completed we will perform this task once every other year or so depending on how fast they grow.  I want to thank my colleagues at Skokie Country Club and Onwentsia Club for sharing this method with me.  Thanks, Don and Scott.

 Jose Rivera vertical mowing greens on Island last week

 This is the pattern left by the vertical mower

 Jr. then follows the vertical mower with a dusting of sand

  Finally Jose Escobar brushes the sand in with this contraption

Topdressing greens is an important component of putting surface management.  The vertical mower reduces thatch accumulation, creates new growth points and allows for a more upright plant growth habit.  The topdress smooths the surface to improve ball roll, dilute organic matter accumulation and helps keep the surface dry and receptive.  The brush incorporates all the sand, cleans the surface prior to mowing and helps in creating a better quality of clip during mowing. Pretty fancy stuff, huh?  We look to perform this task once every two weeks, or so, as the weather and schedule allow.  Tom Denklau.....

 

 ...deserves a great big 'attaboy' for affording us some opportunity to perform this task by opening up the schedule for us a little bit.  Our resident Director of Golf is one heck of a guy!

 

We added some more flowers to the Conference Center walk through since my last post.  The location stays fairly shady and damp so our grower from Terrona Farms in Peotone suggested Fusion Impatiens that can handle a wide variety of locations. John Pascente....

...has done a great job filling a new role after 21 years at Indian Lakes by heading up our Hotel Landscape crew.  Thank you, sir, for your hard work and versatility.

 

 Carlos Hernandez and Manuel Cruz installed new irrigation at Shiraz last week

Testing the new Toro mist heads

The Hotel Landscape crew spends a few days each week watering, weeding and tending to the flowers.  John, Carlos and Manuel C. spent a couple of days installing new lawn and plant bed sprinklers to reduce the amount of hours needed to hand water the plants.  We have the parts in inventory and (since it never stops raining) we can squeeze a day here and there to do some hand work to save us more time as the summer progresses.  I'm happy they did this stuff, for sure!

I will leave you with a picture of my daughter, Molly, who turns SEVEN MONTHS tomorrow!  Where did that time go?  Thank you so much if you made it this far and have a great week.

CB 

"If you want to see the sunshine you have to weather the storm" - Frank Lane

Frank Lane was an executive in the front office of the White Sox, Cardinals, Brewers and Indians of Major League Baseball from 1948 to 1972.  His quote above is truly appropriate as it seemed the storms would never end.  Indian Lakes is enjoying some sunshine today as I write this.  It was worth the wait.

 This is a good 'before' picture of just part of our mini golf course

 The grounds crew removed the damaged, rotting timbers from around the beds

Manuel Munoz planted African Marigolds and Salvia here with a much better effect

We have spent a lot of time upgrading our mini golf course components as best we can.  We still have some repairs to make to the power equipment and some lawn improvements to make but as these pictures illustrate sometimes just removing something (especially rotten timbers) can be 'addition by subtraction'.  Manuel, Adan and Gilberto are our primary associates for the patio, mini golf and the tents and they do a terrific job for us.  Thanks, gentlemen.  More pictures will follow as the flowers in mini golf mature.

Our Massey Ferguson 1547 tractor and Wiedenmann Aerifier at the front entrance

We are always eager to help close business for our great Sales staff here so when Mark and Sue asked us to equip the front entrance with some agricultural hardware at the front door we jumped at the chance.  Hopefully the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association group contact was sufficiently impressed (as he was with the cleanliness of the tractor) to book some business with us.  Cornelio did a fine detail job on this tractor before we parked it up front.  He went as far as to Armor All the whole thing for a nice, shiny look.

 

 I spend a LOT of time working with this thingy here

 A closer view of the thingy

The 'thingy' in the picture is a soil moisture content meter from Spectrum Technologies.  Barrett Schroeder, one of our rookie grounds associates, and I spent a great deal of the first part of the week monitoring our soil moisture content on the putting surfaces on the golf course.  This machine is fairly 'Chuck-proof' (Read: idiot proof) and it tells the user quickly and accurately how much moisture is present in the soils of the putting surfaces by percent volume at a three inch depth with the push of a button.  We are trying to find our 'number' for where the greens are too dry, too wet, too soft, too firm.  The only real dry down we experienced was Tuesday and Wednesday of last week as temperatures pushed above 95 with accompanying high wind speeds.  That feels like a blast furnace, in case you were wondering.  We found some interesting things.  First, the wetting agent we use on greens did a fantastic job of retaining moisture for plant health.  Second, we found that even though we have 27 putting surfaces with different soil types we saw fairly even moisture in all the data points we checked.  I think that is another success story of our wetting agents we use.  The goal is to identify when we need to schedule irrigation events so we don't waste water, power and (as a result) money.  If I find our number I will let you know.

 

 Bring the HEAT!

It was only a three day heat wave but it proved to be a good early test for a few of our processes.  First, our mowing and rolling program went uninterrupted.  Our turf remained healthy on the putting greens even with the standard protocols we have in place for green speed management.  Second, our soil moisture meter fed us information that said that we didn't need to water.  Further, it told us that the irrigation programs we employ at Blackhawk Trace are effective.  Finally, it showed us that our golf course can withstand environmental stresses related to the weather so long as we have the right plans in place.  I don't want to be tested like that anymore....

This is a newly seeded area on 9 Island

I thought (wrongly) that a large sized portion of obviously disturbed soil covered in hay and germinating grass would be enough to keep golfers out of these areas.  I was wrong.  The reality is that if I give something the opportunity to go wrong it probably will.  Dale Webb roped off both of our seeded locations like this to make up for my mistake.  Sorry, Dale and lesson learned.

 

 More SUPER-tunias, Rudbeckia, Cleome, Angelonia and Lobularia

  I think this bed at upper banquets really turned out well.  We will still be planting some flowers in locations like the conference center walk-through, the Shiraz entrance on Schick Road and the hotel front lawns and (weather permitting, finally!) we will be done.  The hotel grounds staff has done a nice job with the floral display this year and I am happy with how they look so far.  The penthouses are knockout, too.  

Thanks for reading (if you made it this far) and I trust everyone had a great weekend!  See you all this coming week!

I will leave you with a good picture of Tina, Tom and Molly riding the car at Home Depot from the other day!