Thanks for the link, gnu. Water is at a premium here in the high desert so we are very careful. We have irrigation water, but no pump, so we have it come through in a long hose which Rog moves from area to area, about three spots all told gravity-fed, to water our big trees which provide shade, his rampant grapevine and a few other small things. The lawn never gets watered except by chance from the tree soakings. It does get mowed about once per month from May to last of August, but we use an electric, i.e. quiet, mulching mower and never rake up the leavings. In Wyoming we lived in a subdivision. Our neighbours hated that we didn't mow as often as they did, every week!, and that we had lots of dandelions. They called our house Dandelion Row which I was rather proud of...I made tincture for a friend with liver problems from the roots of a few "sacrifices." The perennials we had up there and here are hardy, drought-tolerant so watering is kept to minimum.

The one thing we've always liked to do is let the grass grow so high it goes to seed. The birds and other critters love it, it looks lovely, and just keeps getting better looking with a nice density. Can't do that here, though, as the foxtail weeds also go to seed and they are everywhere, so it's cut the grass and weeds time more often than we would like. If we watered more, the grass would crowd them out, but then it would be a stress on the water system, etc. etc. There are some other solutions, but none we are able to try at the moment.