Herbicide Memory

 

Adventure Location:

Decatur, Alabama

Date: June 27, 2024

It was not hot this morning with our hour earlier start of the walk. We made it nicely out the back of the campground and down the usual path to join up with the Hike And Bike gravel trail along the water. OOOOPS what is that sign? Trail Closed? What is going on?

We paused to figure out what is going on. Then we noticed behind the sign the underbrush that had had the herbicide applied was cleared out.

Then we heard the heavy equipment at work.

And finally the OFM memory of some past items about the golf course hit the OFM between the eyes and now he had the whole story again.

Here is what the herbicide was about. Several years ago the OFM played a lot of golf on the course and a few greens near this end of the course were always in bad shape. So one day the golf pro had a specialist come in to figure out what was wrong. He did his proper studying etc and pronounced the trouble as some type of fungus or ??? that was growing on those greens. The good news was that all that was needed was a lot more air circulating over the greens and the fungus would die out. It sounded silly to the OFM. The course folks and the expert went out and marked where the underbrush needed to be removed so the golf course would thrive again.
Soon after equipment was brought to remove the brush and leave the trees. To the OFM's surprise inside of two weeks the greens were putting true again instead of balls bouncing around on the dead clumps of grass, The expert recommended that every three years the brush be cleaned out.

So we should have realized what the herbicide was about when we saw it this year but the OFM no longer is able to play golf and did not recall the expert advice he had learned way back then.

So today we walked the paved road around the course for about a half mile and then there was another sign letting the trail users they could go back onto the trail. So we cut over to the gravel trail and kept walking. The walking was so nice the OFM was at the pump house before he knew it. The pump house is where the golf course pumps water out of the Tennessee river for watering the golf course.

Well here we were at the pump house and had not planned to walk that far. Turning around at the pump house would give us slightly more than three miles on the trail this morning. The best of the news is that we made the whole 3+ miles with no troubles at all and no joint pains. We call today a very successful day. Good night.