Our Current Water Level - Yikes! We're almost out of H2O

Most of my life I’ve lived in Southern California, a fairly arid region. We hardly ever experience thunderstorms, or summer rain showers. From June through late November or December, our precipitation is minimal to none. Over the past few years, however, we have experience prolonged periods of dryness (prolonged meaning it stops raining in March and doesn’t rain again until the following January!), so that officially puts us in a state of drought. Our municipal department of water and power has put us on alert and is limiting how much water we can use. They are prohibiting spraying off sidewalks and driveways, limiting our garden and lawn watering to twice a week, and sending out tips on how to conserve water in the home.

My husband and I have been very good at conserving our water. We have stopped watering the lawn altogether; it’s really very hard to have a beautiful green lawn with a minimal watering schedule, so we’ve given up on the lawn for now. We have purchased drought-resistant container plants, we only have to water them twice a week. We have reduced the amount of laundry we wash, I’m trying to get better at wearing pants that aren’t dirty twice instead of only once and drying towels in the dryer instead of immediately throwing them in the laundry if they are still clean. We’re even doing the whole, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” routine in one of our bathrooms. Our toilets are old, and since we live in a rental, we aren’t replacing them anytime soon. Our water usage over the past few months has been below our limit (28 HCF), which makes me feel like our efforts are paying off.

What made me think about our limited amount of rain are the trees around our house. Lately, they have been shedding their bark, splitting and cracking right though the branches, and looking like they are in distress. These aren’t immature trees, they are older trees that we have never, in our four years of living here, had to water individually. I’m beginning to think that the lack of rain, and our limiting the amount of water we are using around the house, is causing them to die.

One particularly stressed tree is a huge shade tree in our front lawn. It basically shades the whole front of our house. Its branches reach over our roof. One large branch, that leans over our roof, has a huge, gaping crack down the center. I’m afraid that in our next big wind storm (fall is the season for wind here in Southern California) that branch is going to crack in half and topple onto our roof! My dilemna is should I water the trees deeply and hope to reduce the amount of damage that’s been done or wait it out for the rain to come? What if the rain doesn’t come? Perhaps Southern California will turn into a desert in the coming future and all the large trees will eventually die out due to lack of water. Obviously, to resolve the current distressed trees, I think I can use a little bit of our water and give them all a deep watering this weekend!