Technology has helped to make the world more mobile, and when your office is a golf course, this is a great thing. While I am touring the course checking progress of daily tasks, I can fulfill the office portion of my day, emails, phone calls and communicating with staff from the seat of my cart. Another benefit is I can easily that take a lot of pictures around the course without having to carry a clunky camera. The scenery I get to capture every day is awesome and the beauty of Aldarra is easy to showcase. The following 5 (+1 honorable mention) are my favorite photos of the year and a small explanation of why.
Teamwork
The course wouldn't be what it is without the staff and I'm lucky to work with them. This picture was taken in late March and Spring is in on its way and we are preparing the course for a beautiful day. You can see the snow on the Cascade Mountains in the distance and the beauty of Aldarra in the foreground, but the best part here is guys working together to complete the days tasks. I am grateful for their effort and commitment.
Nature
This is a mason bee, covered in pollen as he's been out all day pollinating plants around the property. This was taken about a foot away from the front of his house. I've never been a fan of bees, due to their ability to sting, but a joint project with Crown Bees, written about in this post, opened my eyes to bees as I had never seen them. These creatures are amazing to watch and deserve more attention and understanding as a role in pollinate the world food supply.
Paint the W!
The University of Washington Women's Golf Team won a National Championship in 2016 and we painted the mid-field logo from Husky Stadium on our first fairway to honor their victory. Painting logos isn't something golf course managers usually do, we leave that to our Sports Turf counterparts so this was a lot of fun. A big thanks to the Grounds department at the UW for loaning the stencil to complete this project. A local painter helped us finish this project and it was much easier to do this with a paint sprayer than applying it with rollers. The paint used was indoor latex paint and two weeks after application you could still see the outline. Note, no turf was harmed in the painting of this logo.
Goats
The use of goats on a golf course isn't groundbreaking, but it was a great addition to our program for this year. Two hundred and fifty goats, two Border Collies, one Komondor guard dog, and a great goat herder started the process of cleaning up the area fronting seven fairway. We have since completed cleaning up what the goats started (blog post coming soon) and it turned out great. The best part of this project and why this picture makes the list was the positive feedback from members and their guests. So many benefits came from this project we have secured the goats for 2017!
What a Special Place
This picture captures so much of what makes this job so special. We get to enjoy a time of the day that most people don't see, it is a reward to see the sun come up each morning before anyone else shows up. I've captured many photos of Mt. Si in my time at Aldarra, but never with the silhouette of the clubhouse in the foreground.
Honorable Mention - New Tools
We added some awesome technology to our spraying capabilities that will reduce costs, while improving efficiency. We have yet to reach the full capability of this technology, but I am excited to find out where it can take us and how it will improve our operation.
I am excited for the year ahead. We continue to review our areas for growth and build on our strengths as a team in preparation for 2017.
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