But Bob - those sorts of yards are much more eco-friendly in your part of the country - so pat yourself on the back for not using kilowatt hours of energy and thousands of gallons of precious clean water to maintain vegetation that isn't meant to grow there !
Up here, we get plenty of rain, usually, though my part of the state is largely glacial moraine (gravel) and granite builders with a thin covering of topsoil. If we don't get rain for a few weeks, the collection of weeds that I call my lawn starts to dry up. But I don't bother with watering it - I have to do less mowing that way !