There is no doubt the summers are coming sooner and are getting hotter. Well, maybe this year was a smidge better,. However, my water rates keep going up and I am using an average of 7K gallons a month. My usual summer use is 11-13 K gallons for my 3000 sqft yard (approx minus the footprint of the house. In the rainy season I have gotten my water use to 3-4 K a month. The increase use is almost all for the yard. Even in low usage times, I still am watering the yard almost everyday. The sprinkler is just off and I don't water if it rains heavily. I figure my actual water that goes down the sewer is really around 2000 gallons at the most. I have maximally conserved indoors.
I have lost plants because as the water became less affordable, I had to cut down on watering and some plants could not handle that. My sprinkler head was cracked and I did not notice until the grass started to die out. I still have to fix the sprinkler head the neighbor broke.
I am still weeding the backyard and putting down weed cloth when I can to make it easier to weed and because I don't have grass there anyway and the sprinkler heads have all been capped off.
Some plants are surviving on their own with my sporadic watering. I have moved some plants to group them or put them in the back where I do water so they get water on a more regular basis
I actually have full rain barrels and I only emptied one 55 gallon barrel once this summer. It is full again so I need to empty it again.
I usually make a 50/50 peatlite mix, but I have been adding more peat moss so the pots won't dry out as fast in the summer. I will find out if that comes back to bite me when the rainy season comes.
I do have to replace some plants
I am replacing blue daze with dwarf chenille plant because the red goes better with the euphorbia and it can grow with even less water than blue daze.
The agapanthus are shrinking in size to cope with having less water. It is noticeable to me, but it is a strategy that does keep them alive. I had replaced the cuphea with geraniums, but the geraniums are tall and interfere with the roses and these are not the red geraniums I thought I had, they were scented and they don't bloom as much. The scale is also attacking and weakening them. I have alyssum in part of it, but the HOA keeps citing me because they billow over onto the driveway, so I am think I may put the cuphea back since it does not grow as fast and needs less pruning. The scale does bother it, but not as bad as the geraniums and roses.
I am considering building more sips since they use water very efficiently.
What are you doing to conserve water and make you garden more drought resistant