Finally a little rain to start the weekend.  We have a busy week ahead as all greens, tees, and fairways will be aerated.  Greens and fairways will be contracted out to expedite the process.  Play will be available on a limited basis so please check with the pro shop before venturing out.  The driving range will remain open.

It has been a difficult period with wind and tree pollen.  Here oak flowers litter the thirteenth bunker.  Oaks produce both male and female flowers.  The male flowers are called catkins and much larger and when they drop are a royal pain!

Oak catkins on the thirteenth green.  All fine turf areas must be blown before mowing.

Bunker sand was added to some shallow bunkers this week.

Covering sterilized greens sand for aeration.  This sand must be bone dry to spread properly in the DryJect equipment.

Spring Dead Spot disease on the driving range tee.  This disease affects bermudagrass and is difficult to control even with preventive fungicides.

The bermuda is just beginning to grow so it shouldn't be too long before we are able to hit off grass.  The light green turf is perennial ryegrass and the blue is the bermuda just starting to grow.

Cross cutting fairways for the first time this season.

Adding mulch around the old oak trees!

Dead annual bluegrass weevil adults and a successful insecticide application.

Beautiful tulips about to wrap up for the season.

The course continues to be in a very dry state.  This will pass as one of the driest springs in a long time. And what about the wind?  The wind continues to howl and makes one think we are on the coast.  Hopefully we will receive some rain soon as this will help the course heal from next weeks aerification.

All our new tees are now open and ready for play.  No more bending it around the trees on thirteen!

Annual bluegrass weevil monitoring using a soap flush on the fourteenth fairway. The soapy solution is applied to the turf and causes beetles to come out from hiding and are then counted.  The soap doesn't 

hurt the grass.

Annual bluegrass weevil.  All fine turf areas were treated with an insecticide this week.

All fairways are now being mowed with triplex cutting units.  We will be purchasing two mowers soon to allow us to efficiently mow fairways.

We have seen some minor disease on some of our greens.  This is called Waitea Patch and is an almost annual event on our greens.

Annual bluegrass seed head suppression on our greens was pretty successful as demonstrated by this photo.  The perimeters of the greens were not treated as the chemical can be harsh to bent collars.  Not bad control!

New sod installation at the clubs entrance.  The center area with turf was sprayed with Roundup and will be mulched soon.

We have had an excellent display of tulips this spring that is unfortunately about to end.

Tulipmania!

Its Masters week but it feels like winter.  Hopefully this cold spell will be short-lived and we can get back to warmer temperatures.  It would help if the wind would calm down too!  It has also been particularly dry so some beneficial rain would be nice.  Looks like Thursday is the day.

Root pruning of invasive tree roots was recently performed throughout the course.  This helps reduce trees pulling valuable moisture from fairway turf.

Removing growth from around fifteen lake.

Relocating azaleas in the bed by the sixth green to a shadier spot.  Plants more tolerant of a hot southern exposure will be added later.

Replacing weak turf with fresh sod on the fourteenth hole.

Its been snowing flower petals with all the wind we have experienced.

Growth regulators are really pushing the bent through the Poa in our fairways.  This should get even better when the weather warms up.

Whoops!  After planting tulips for over 25 years without a mixup it finally happened. 

Here is the pine with the red tail hawk nest correctly identified by Bob McNamara.