What a week!

Weather is always the uncontrollable factor when it come time to aerify, however this is the first time we have ever had outright downpours during greens aerification.  You can see below that Monday morning started out alright.

 By mid-morning things changed, as the skies opened up, and everyone learned that you can truly only get so wet.  The great thing about our greens is that they are sand-based, and with holes open, the water didn't stick around on the surface long.

The afternoon came and brought with it another round of heavy rain, for a total of 1.60" during the greens aerification process.  While the greens didn't seem to mind this at all, trying to uniformly apply topdressing sand under these conditions was challenging.

If the sand and putting surfaces are dry, it's easily worked into the holes, whereas damp sand and surfaces leads to the sand "bridging" across the tops of the holes.  Not surprisingly, we were getting lots of sand bridging when the rain started.  Oddly enough though, the rain came down at such a rate that any of the sand which was smearing across the holes, was flushed down into them, leaving the greens in close to the same condition as we see when everything is 100% dry.

This was a tough day, and one thing that can't be overstated is the amazing job the team did by persevering through some pretty darned miserable weather.  The Grounds staff, along with the strong, young backs from the Pro Shop staff, knocked it out of the park!

Tuesday we tackled tee aerification, and yes, it rained on us again.  Fortunately this held off until we were close to finished, and the impact was minimal.

If aerification wasn't enough fun for one week, the Master Plan work on #12 started as well...

At times like this, words like challenging, stressful, and frustrating may come to mind.  However, "boring" certainly does not!