Another Great Show

Jeremy and Gabe have done it again.  This years show of color around the House is better than ever.

 The perennials around the 1894 restaurant have reached full maturity.  

 Some trees were removed around the putting green last winter and now there is more space for annuals and more sunshine to make them explode with color.

 This is the first year we've had the Historical Marker so that area is getting some extra attention.

 The patio pots are simple and elegant.  I remember when Jeremy was planting them this spring and I took these two pictures so I could post them later and show how far they've come and what's in them.

 So here is what they looked like when they were planted and look at the picture below to see what plants were selected.

Jeremy and Gabe, your expertise is second to none.  Thanks for all that you do!

Playground on the Prairie

 If you haven't already heard, the Lakewood Historical Society created a marker for the Club which commemorates it's historical significance.  We recently placed it near the north end of the clubhouse.  This seems like a good spot for the marker, but the final resting place is still being discussed at the committee level.  In the mean time, take a minute to go check it out. 

Lakewood has been a city for only 20 years, yet the town and community of Lakewood, once known simply as "the prairie", has a long, interesting history.  The Lakewood Historical Society was formed in 1998 and this marker is proof that they are fulfilling their mission to identify, preserve, and perpetuate Lakewood's history. Should the Club be recognized as historically significant?  I certainly think so.  In 1894, the Club was just a golf club.  When the Club moved the shore of American Lake in 1904, it became much more.  In addition to golf, there was boating, fox hunting, polo, tennis, and shooting.  When cars came along one of the favorite pastimes was driving and the vast open space around the Club was ideal for driving.  The Club became known as the playground on the prairie, and of course not everyone could afford this leisure.  It became the destination for Tacoma's upper crust of society.  All the movers and shakers joined the Club.  These were the people that started industry which provided the jobs.  These were the people that shaped and built Tacoma and the surrounding communities like Lakewood.  Yes, the Club is certainly significant to Lakewood's history.  As one of the first golf clubs in America, it is in fact historically significant at a national level.  Let's never forget that.  This historical marker certainly belongs here.  If you would like to see the other Lakewood historical markers, click HERE to see a list of them.  If you want to know more about Lakewood's history, check out the Lakewood Historical Society's website HERE.

Pinke's Passion

Your horticulturist Jeremy Pinke is obviously very passionate about his work and it's clearly evident this spring as things are blooming very well considering we had some record low temperatures this past winter.  Jeremy has always done an excellent job managing the gardens around the Club which has been considerably challenging lately given all the changes around both the clubhouse and the golf course.  For example, in the above picture you see #12 green.  This area has undergone several changes in the past few years.  First was a complete change in 2010 when the sewer went through, and then just this past year a new teeing ground was added.  Check out a picture of this area in 2009.

Things have certainly changed and Jeremy Pinke (We just call him Pinky) has always adapted so well, making sure everything gets put back together and looking good for the golf season.  Well he's super busy right now as all of the new plant material is coming in and he is hard at it working his magic.

The hanging baskets are so big that it's a two man job unloading them.  Above you see Jeremy's  assistant Gabe helping him out.  Gabe has been with us since 2010 and together these two guys are in charge of all the grounds off the golf course, in addition to those gardens that remain on the golf course.  They just do an awesome job.  If you don't think they have a huge responsibility, just go to the Club entrance and walk from there all the way around the parking lots to the pool down by the lake.  It is a massive property for just 2 people to manage.

I know this year Jeremy is trying out a lot of plants that have interesting foliage as opposed to blooms. I think it's looking great and since nice foliage should persist all season as opposed to blooms, it seems like a fun worthwhile experiment.

The 1894 island got a face-lift this spring.  Jeremy is trying out dwarf boxwood this time.  The original 1894 hedge was Ilex crenata or commonly called Japanese holly which is still the plant that makes up the 1894 facing the putting green.  The restaurant side of the island which you see here is pretty shady and the holly never really did well.  Hopefully the boxwood will be happy here.

You might remember that Jeremy is also the one in charge of the island which underwent a major face-lift this past winter.  Right now is the time to see it in full color, so if you like spring color, head down and check it out before it stops blooming.  If you happen to see Jeremy and Gabe the next time your out at the Club, please take the time to tell them how much you appreciate the work they do.

Lastly, if you haven't noticed yet, I'm sure you will the next time you walk down #1.  We have started the renovation of the practice hole.  Master shaper Kip Kalbrenner is on site again and Nick Schaan our architect has laid out the plan.  With these two guys on the job, you know it's going to be special.  The green is getting expanded and there will be two bunkers once this project is finished.  There won't be a short game practice area anywhere in Puget Sound that compares to the one at Tacoma once this project is completed.  Stay tuned.

Last Minute Tweaking

#11 tee last Friday

#11 tee yesterday.  As you can see this warm wet weather has been good for growing in the new tees.  The young swards are filling in nicely and we are just a little over two weeks away from playing the course from the new back tees at a total yardage of 6910 yards.  This new tee on #11 is really cool as it is tucked deep under an old oak grove.

The new teeing ground on 16 is also looking great.  If you don't like the pole in the tee then you don't like the pole in the tee.  I love the pole in the tee and this is going to be a fun tee shot.  This whole area is neat as directly to the left of this photo you can see how the tee is connected to the run off area of #12 green.  Here's a look at that.

Below you can see how the new 7th tee is connected to the 17th tee.  This teeing ground is going to create some interesting interaction between players as they tee off next to each other going different directions.

 And of course on #18 you run into the same situation on the now 565 yard home hole.  This teeing ground is  over an acre in size and shared by the sixth hole.  Below is how the shot looks from #18.

And below is how the teeing ground looks from #6.

You can see that this warm, wet stretch of weather has brought up all the overseeding, and we now have total coverage of baby grass plants, even in those areas where we struggled after the historic heat stretch during early May.  Below is how the young sward looks up close.

We are five weeks out now after our initial seeding of this ground and we have been applying fertilizer every 7 days to get this grass growing rapidly.  Now we just need to mow, mow, mow as this will stimulate tillering and thus increase density.  The anticipation of playing the new tees is growing around the membership as now with grass on them, they are looking like tees.  The 15 day forecast is for sunny weather so we will have a great chance to get them good and ready for US Open field day on the 15th.  Jeremy is doing his part to increase the excitement building around the Club.

The flowers have been delivered and he's been planting like crazy lately.  This is that new area by the main patio.

And you can see that at the main putting green, things are looking really good with his new arrangement.  I'm not sure exactly what's in here but you can bet I will devote a future blog to pointing out exactly what Jeremy has selected for this years show of color. 

And yes the hanging baskets are in and each one is customized with material that will work best in their individual micro-climates.   

You may have noticed some last minute tweaking of the mowing lines on the course.  Here you can see we took some of that nice poa turf off of #8...........and used it to replace some scalped ryegrass elsewhere that wasn't so great.

Here we are replacing that with some ryegrass rough.  The mowing line here is much improved now.

In some other areas the tweaking was mostly just an exchange of sod like here on 14 approach.  What you see above is how things looked as a result of moving some bunkers around.  So we went in with the sod cutter and moved some turf around so it looks appropriate with the new bunker configuration.  

And this is how it turned out.  We have been doing this kind of work in many areas around the new bunkers, and to be honest, this kind of stuff will go on for a very long time before we're happy.  But right now, the rest of it will have to wait till next winter and the winter after that.  The weather is turning back to awesome, and the tournament season is under way.  It's now about golf.................... so get out there and enjoy it.

Lake retaining wall

Here was the scene at the lake this past summer as unseasonably high water and wind last spring "washed out" our landscape between the pool facility and the dock.  Exposed irrigation pipe like this is not good.  PVC pipe of this type (all type that is white) degrades very quickly when exposed to direct sunlight.  Degraded plastic pipe is very brittle and should not be under pressure.   That is why all summer we had this area pressurized only briefly so as to irrigate the area, and then the valve was shut so that we didn't have to worry about this pipe breaking and causing a catastrophic "wash out".  Access to the lake with any type of machinery is difficult, and up until the last few months of the summer, this area was still under water.  That is why we are just now able to resolve the situation.  Soon, the rains will come and the lake level will rise making it very difficult to fix this problem.  So yesterday during the Police Fireman Tourney, most of the staff went into action on the shore of the lake.  This picture below shows them constructing a retaining wall of large crushed rock that wont be washed away by the inevitable high water we will see this upcoming winter.

Also, this picture shows that we sleeved the irrigation pipe with a large 6 inch pipe so that the rocks wont rub against the pressurized pipe.  So inside the sleeve is new irrigation pipe since the old stuff was ruined by exposure to sunlight.  You can see in this next picture that there really isn't that much dry land to work on and currently the lake is at it's lowest point of the year.

But lack of dry land is really not the most challenging aspect of this project.  The toughest part of the whole thing is navigating the steep access road from the back lawn to the lake shore.  This road is so steep that very few vehicles in our fleet have the traction ability to climb back up it.  In this case we needed to haul large heavy loads of rock down the hill and then climb back out.  The only vehicles that we could do this work with are the two all-wheel drive Toro Workmans.  Here you can see Kevin descending on the road with a heavy load.

Well it took most of the crew all day but they got'r done.  GREAT JOB GUYS!!  Below is a couple of pics of the finished wall.  Will it hold up against Mother Nature this winter?...............Confidence is high.

Flagpoles 101

In 2007, we installed this beautiful 80 foot aluminum flagpole.

She replaced the 80 foot wood flagpole which has stood in front of the Club since "I don't know when".  I've done a lot of research but I simply cannot find any information in the history books that will give me a clue when the wood pole was installed. Anyway, with the major improvements that were made to the parking lot in 2007, the wood pole had to be relocated and it was decided to replace it instead with an aluminum pole that will last forever.  Below you see me with the chainsaw cutting down the old wood pole.

Point of interest, I saved the old wood pole and now she stands in front of our maintenance facility.  The picture below shows the Green Department flag flying from the old pole at our shop.

Back to the new poles we installed this week.  I thought that the installation was interesting enough to share since it's a little more complicated than just digging a hole and putting it up.  The following pictures tell the story.  First, after much discussion deciding on the exact location, the holes had to be dug.  This was done with a vaccuum truck as seen below which is the same type of machine they use to clean out the drains on all of our streets. 

They shoot water at high pressure into the soil which loosens it and then the loose, wet soil is sucked up into the truck, as seen here.

  This method has several advantages over digging with a backhoe.  First of all, the depth of the holes were 7 feet for the 70 foot pole, and 6 feet for the 60 foot pole.  Digging holes this deep with a backhoe would have resulted in a hole that is much too wide for the confined space of the 1894 island. We would have ended up having to replace curbing, and removing all the shrubs and flowers. Also, the displaced soil would have been loaded into a dumptruck and inevitably dirt would have been spilled on the road meaning more clean up afterward.  The biggest advantage to the vaccum truck is that there was utilities in the area that had to be avoided.  Using water and the vaccum meant that there was virtually no way of damaging any of the utilities.  The picture below shows that indeed we did find the high pressure water main which supplies all of the homes south of the club along Country Club Drive.  This is a very old concrete/asbestos pipeline and breaking it would have been a very costly mistake.

So after the hole was dug, a sleeve was dropped in along with several yards of concrete.

 Here you see the sleeve has been installed and there was hardly any disturbance to the flowers and shrubs.

Jeremy repaired the landscape and then we were ready to bring in the flagpoles.

Each pole arrived on site in three very large pieces and then was assembled.

The crane came in and stood them up while the pole was guided into the sleeve.

The pole is held straight and then sand is poured in around the pole.  The sand keeps the pole straight but also allows the pole to sway a little in high wind conditions.  Concrete would hold the pole to rigid which isn't good (I guess).  Mortar was placed on top of the sand to keep everything in place and that's pretty much it.

There you have it.  An impressive display.  Now we are flying the State flag and Club Flag along with "Old Glory".