What are we behind on?

How has the virus affected the Grounds staff thus far? We are all healthy, but some work was pushed back. We had a layoff of 18 days where our staff did not come in to work. We then slowly added hours back into rotation. We are starting this week back to regular hours but are behind in a few areas.

The flower/landscape beds on the course were weeded and edged in early March. Then we lost the staff and we were unable to continue working on the beds. Weeds have reemerged and we have not been able to spray them yet. We also have not been able to freshen up the wood chip mulch in any of the flower beds either. There are some washed out areas from heavy rains, places where the mulch has just deteriorated over time, and there are a couple of new beds that need mulch added for the first time.

We also got an early start on the clubhouse landscapes and then were interrupted. Weeds have begun to infiltrate in these flower beds. Now that our staff is starting back to a full schedule, we will make weeding the clubhouse beds a priority. There are also no flowers in at clubhouse right now. We pulled our winter flowers out, but it has been too cold to plant our summer flowers. We have them here on site and are waiting until after the last frost to get them in the ground.

Lastly, one other aspect on which we are behind is general course cleanup. There have been several windy days over the last month and many sticks have blown down. Other than cleaning off greens to mow, we have not spent much time at all picking up and removing this debris. This will be a continual process, as it always is, but we are getting off to a slower start than usual.

The staff layoff we had was 18 days. We still completed some very basic work to keep the semblance of a golf course, but that was it. This inevitably led to some things being skipped or delayed. We will work very hard to get back on track, but when golfers return, there may be a few aspects of the course below our standard.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

In addition to repairing your own ball mark on every green, please repair at least one other as well.

Also, as part of a Golf Committee initiative to improve course etiquette, we have included links to videos teaching proper on course etiquette. Please take a moment to watch:

Ball Marks - How to properly repair

Bunker etiquette

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org