Another week of actual winter

 

Luckily our area ended up on the light side of the ice Armageddon that the news was calling for on Saturday. The sleet covered the property and afforded both our courses a few days rest.

Our team was out and about Monday to clean up the mess around the Clubhouse. The sun helped out as well and most of the surfaces were clear by the afternoon. We still have some ice left on a few shaded areas but it looks like a few brave soles will be teeing it up this afternoon on the South.

The covers on the North apparently know exactly what to do by keeping the soil temps at exactly freezing temp even when the air temp is around 20. We will pull the covers back today to check on some moisture and then put them right back on for probably another week. Even the bentgrass on the South is pretty close to going dormant this year which is a great thing. With the turf hardened off, any spent energy is going to the plants root system and will be better prepared for the summer.

Outside of the recent ice it has certainly been dry. Somehow we had a tiny brush fire behind 4 South in the past few days. The dry chaff can light up even with a cigarette butt when it's dry. It will be interesting to see how this area greens up compared to the regular rough. Our initial guess is that it may green up first!

With no one on the golf course on Monday new target poles will installed on the Driving Range for this season. The poles are planted in sleeves so we can remove them to mow. Hopefully the poles and larger flags are more visible for your practice session into the brown tundra.

Tree work continues this week albeit closer to the cartpath where possible. It is almost hard to tell now but a willow oak was taken out from between two other oaks here behind 10 North green. The smaller oak that was removed was being shaded from its southernly neighbor. The three remaining oaks here now have plenty of room to grow for years to come.

Pruning with the lift also continues and with the North being closed we have moved over to the left of 1. The Elaeagnus here gets hairy quickly and has grown just out of reach to be pruned from the ground. The guys will have this easy 400 yard stretch looking good by the end of the week.

Watch out for more snow this weekend and then hopefully we can get back to some "normal" Charlotte winter weather!

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