Level 3 Mowing Update

Prepared by:

Catrin Dubois

Landscape Superintendent

 

The native areas behind the Sun City homes are scheduled to receive mowing 2-3 times a year depending on growth and the seeding of the wild flowers.

This year Mother Nature has decided to add a couple of cold fronts to the Spring mix. What does this mean to our native areas and the mow schedule? Cooler weather will delay the wild flowers. To ensure flowers for the coming years we have to wait until they have had a chance to bloom and go to seed so the timing of the mowings is critical

You have noticed the Bluebonnets and other wild flowers blooming along the highways and native areas. There are numerous flowers that have budded and are about to show their colors.

A couple examples are the Mexican hats, the Cardinal flowers, Cosmos, Indian Blankets, Fire wheels and many others are yet to be seen. Our goal every year is to preserve our wild flower meadows and native grasses that aid in erosion control and wild life habitat while maintaining a fuel brake behind the homes. Right now all native vegetation is green and lush which means it does not carry any fuel content in case of a grass fire in our community. CA staff works closely with the Firewise group to identify fuel load and when to schedule the cutting of the 10’-30’ fuelbrakes.

The cutting of the native areas is solely allocated to reduce of fuel load not aesthetics, weed, varmint or reptile control. Should you decide to mow an additional 5’ strip behind your lot line it would be acceptable at this time. You will receive advance notice through the CA Communicator when the mowers will be on site this year. Right now we anticipate June or July.

April 2013 Course Conditions Report

April has been a hit and miss on the weather, one day its sun tan weather and the next day we are in our insulated overalls. The good news is that we’ve had enough warm days for the courses to green up and for the dormancy look of winter to go away. All three courses have applied a bulk fertilizer application and with the recent rains and some warm weather we will be in full mowing mode in the next couple of weeks.

The Legacy Hills bunker project is being wrapped up as I write this and besides some clean-up around the shop area it is all but finished. The only remaining signs of work are on holes #17 and #18 where we still have silt fencing around the bunker surrounds that were sodded. That silt fence will remain there for the next two weeks until the sod is established. If we feel the sod is ready sooner than that we will pull it out before the two week period. Thank you to all of our golfers who have been patient throughout this process.

The first quarter projects that we have in place should wrap up in the next two weeks and extinguish the 30k that was put into the 2013 operating budget for golf course improvements. The tree trimming on #6 may take an additional week depending on the tree company’s schedule.   

The Playability committee also met this month and completed the Spring tour of Cowan Creek.  During this tour we also looked at some of the safety items that were brought up in the Safety Committee’s report from last year. Two notable items were some large drop offs near the bathrooms on #13 and #17 at Cowan Creek which have since been addressed. Next month we will be working on some of the other drop offs next to the paths and fixing them with either DG or with some kind of rock work as we did on hole #11 at White Wing.