I never water, nor do most my neighbors. I've never fertalized. Brown lawns aren't frowned on around here. I've got a lot of clover in my lawn, not intentional but I'm fine with it.
No watering here. I've fertilized our yard every year by mulching up the leaves that fall each Michigan autumn and then overseed with ten pounds of drought tolerant grass seed. The grass seed alone chokes out about 90% of all weeds as it comes up in the spring and the grass (Michigan summers help) stays green-ish much of the year. What else can we do? The kids need a place that will not harbor deer ticks and Lyme's disease. I'm not into having rodent habitat butting up to my home. Anyone have any experience with rotary push mower? I imagine that there's a good reason that they've not had a resurgence in popularity since the 1920's. It would be cool to keep the yard maintained without gasoline and noise.