First let me say that we live in Lombard and our grass is so dry and brittle that it hurts to walk on it in bare feet! I have heard that you can just let your lawn go dormant during drought and it will come back again when it rains and cools off some. This has been my approach this year because it is a full time job just keeping up with everything else that needs watering. In the Tribune this weekend though it said you still have to water the lawn every couple of weeks or it will just die. How do you tell if it is dormant or just dead? Our lawn is really brown but we have very little shade to protect it from the hot sun. I dont want to waste water if the lawn is dead and not dormant.