Rain

3.68 inches!

That is the amount of rain we have had in the month of April, so far. It looks like more is on the way tonight. According to Weather Underground, 1.85 inches (ed: weather.com says 3.3 inches is normal) is normal for the month of April. What this means is that we are wet.

Some other things that have been going on:

We planted 9 cherry trees and 3 apples trees in the orchard. Most of the cherries are at the north end of the orchard, near #7 green. This is just replacing trees that have died over the last forty years since the course was built. This is one of my favorite projects out here. The orchard belonged to the original farm owned and operated by Dr. Eugene Leslie. They would sell apples, pears, cherries and raspberries to the local citizens. The orchard is a signature of holes 6 and 8, as many drives make it into the tightly packed trees. Last year we replaced 10 cherries, 8 apples and 7 pears. I have counted around 40 more spots where trees have been cut down in the past and not replaced. My plan is to fill these areas in so that there is a fruit tree every 15 feet in this section. 10- 15 trees a year should see this plan done in the next 5 years.

We had these little guys drop by for a few days.

They are Bufflehead Ducks (Bucephala albeola) They stopped by on the migration north.

This last picture is my attempt at a close up of some lilac buds getting ready to burst.

Catching Up.

Things have been busy the last week or so. Golf season is finally upon us (as evidenced by the 80 degree weather we had last Sunday, hope you got a chance to get out and play.)

Here are some of the things we have been working on.
1) New irrigation installed on the left side of #3, between #1 and #3 and the left side of #16. Below is a picture of the lines on #3.

2) We put up a bat house that we got as a gift from Wendy Nagle's 2nd and 3rd grade class at the Ann Arbor Learning Community.

3) We deep-tine aerified all of the greens and hollow tined the collars. The deep tine aerification is a solid 14 inch long tine. This breaks through any layers that develop in our greens over time. #3 green is a prime example of this layering. After many years of topdressing on the greens, we now have 3-4 inches of sand on all of our greens. Unfortunately, water doesn't move readily through the change from one layer to the next. On #3, this means that all of the water from the spring tends to sit in the top 3 inches, making it waterlogged. This is why we had #3 green closed down this spring. The channel that the deep tine punches allows water to move past the layer and drain out of the soil profile.

After aerifing, we topdressed sand onto the greens to fill in the holes and smooth the putting surface.

4)We also turned on the irrigation system. We waited until after we had the new irrigation lines installed because it makes it a lot easier to do when the lines are not filled with water.

5) I saw this green heron (Butorides virescens) near the pumphouse. I love this little bird. It is not as famous as it's larger cousin, the great blue heron, but I think it is more interesting. That might be because I don't see them as much.

Blue Winged Teal

These four ducks were out on the pond on #8 this morning. I believe they are Blue Winged Teal.

March Weather Summary (2011)

The high temperature for March was 68.8 degrees (March 17th) and the low was 8.4 (March 7th). The average temp was 34.3 with two days that did not get above 32 and 24 days with the low below freezing. We had 2.87 inches of rain with the largest rain event occuring on March 5th (0.69 in.) Six days had more than a tenth of an inch of rain. The high wind recorded was 29 mph (March 17th)