Drop by Drop : The drought: Rationing is at hand. Families are making trade-offs to conserve their precious water allotments.

Adrian Luka would rather water his roses than take a shower.

Planted a few weeks ago in the front yard of his daughter’s Burbank house, Luka’s roses will need sunshine, care and water--lots of water--before they bloom. Luka, 75, a retired bricklayer who immigrated to Burbank from Yugoslavia in 1978, knows that, as California enters its fifth year of drought, every drop of water his flowers need is precious.

But so are his roses.

“If she does not get a little bit of water, she will die,” Luka said of his flowers.

The trade-off: no shower for Luka on days his roses need water.

As the flow of water slows to a trickle, Luka and hundreds of thousands of residents in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys are making decisions every day about the best uses for their dwindling water supplies.

Does washing a load of laundry mean the lawn goes unwatered? Take a shower or run the dishwasher? Let the garden die or wash the car?

In the face of rationing and mandatory cutbacks, conserving water has become the topic of conversation at dinner parties, lunch counters and family meetings in the arid valleys of northern Los Angeles County. People are restricting their water consumption and waste by installing low-flow shower heads. Sprinklers run less. The faucet goes off while brushing teeth and shaving. Lawns are dying. Buckets are placed under faucets to collect water that otherwise would have gone down the drain.

But residents must cut back even more as cities in the area further restrict the amount of available water. The Los Angeles City Council will likely approve mandatory cuts later this week. Other cities are considering similar restrictions or already have approved them. Stiff penalties will be levied against those who fail to comply.

For residents who already have cut their consumption by as much as they thought possible, the question is, how much further must they go?

“If people have been cutting back already, it’s going to be difficult to cut back another 15%,” said Emmet Wilson, owner of CityScape landscaping in Van Nuys.

Jo Ann Pryor of Saugus, who is such an avid gardener that she once raised mushrooms in a closet, said she normally would have vegetable seedlings growing in pots at this time of year. But Pryor, like other apprehensive gardeners, is holding off planting until water restrictions are announced.

Pryor has also stopped watering her front lawn and plans to replace it with shrubs and perhaps decorative rock. Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., already has let his lawn die.

Greg Buckalew said he recently laid about 2,000 square feet of sod outside his Sunland home. It requires watering three or four times a week. “I just spent $800 on sod,” said Buckalew, who is cutting back water use inside his house. “I’m not going to let it die.”

Landscapers and nurseries said yards and gardens often are the first casualties in the battle to save water. Although more and more questions about drought-resistant plants are being asked by homeowners, “people are really not too happy with the looks of them,” Wilson said. Some opt for greener landscapes anyway, figuring they can make up the difference by cutting elsewhere.

The practicality of Herb and Frieda Margolis’ front yard is now becoming apparent. When they moved into their Northridge home 13 years ago, they ripped up the grass and planted a tangle of yucca trees and prickly pears on a foundation of gravel.

The retired couple’s desert garden was modeled after his brother’s in Palm Springs, and it can go without water for a week at a time. “We just thought it was a nice idea at the time,” Frieda Margolis said. “We’re sure glad we did it now.”

At Antelope Valley Country Club, General Manager John Boydston knows he would be at the bottom of the list if water rationing is imposed. But Boydston said the 140-acre course in Palmdale has its own well that is now unused. Course officials are investigating the possibility of pumping from the well to keep the course alive.

“We’re going to do what we can to keep this thing going,” Boydston said.

But getting water out of the ground is becoming more difficult as the water table in many places drops from over-pumping.

Randy Alleman, owner of American Water Well Service in Agua Dulce, said his company has modified dozens of well pumps in recent months to protect the motors from heating up if the wells run dry--a modification that can run from $150 to $1,000, depending on the equipment.

In addition, Alleman has been warning customers, especially newcomers to rural areas, that wells cannot sustain a city lifestyle in the country. “We tell them not to put in lawns,” he said.

To Sherman Oaks resident Rochelle Simms, who uses a five-gallon bottled water container to illustrate to her 5-year-old twins how much water different tasks require, the lawn is untouchable. Conserving water has been the subject of several family meetings, and Simms said water use inside her two-story house has been severely curtailed so the lawn outside remains green and thick for her children to play on.

Water from the children’s inflatable splash pool is used to water flowers during the summertime. Bricks are stacked inside the toilet tank so each flush requires less water. Low-flow fixtures are installed on every faucet. The shower is turned off to lather up, turned back on to rinse off.

“If someone were just to drive by, it may not look like we’re cutting back on water,” Simms said, referring to her expansive lawn. “But you have to look at the whole picture.”

Brooke Ritter, a 7-year-old second-grader, has deputized herself the water marshal of her parent’s two-story house along Seco Canyon Road in Saugus. “She’s always after me about the water,” said Sara Rouse, Brooke’s grandmother. When Rouse runs the faucet to heat up the dishwater, Brooke is often there with a familiar refrain: “Grandma, turn the water off, turn the water off.”

Other students in the Saugus Union Elementary School District are conserving too. At a picnic last spring students decided to do without a popular water sport. “The kids said they couldn’t do the Slip-N-Slide because it wastes water,” said Pryor, a resource specialist for the district.

And at Erwin Street School in Van Nuys, Principal Jean Brown said the school has a regular conservation program that includes tips on how to save water. But the drought has complicated plans for an annual campus beautification program, which usually relies on flowers and other plants that require lots of water. Cactus and rock gardens are not the landscaping of choice for an elementary school full of students. “It’s not an option,” Brown said.

In Canyon Country, Valerie Hamer said the eight horses at her Magic Ranch will have to do without regular baths this summer. Nor does Hamer plan to water down the exercise ring, the usual procedure for keeping dust down.

A horse can drink anywhere from 10 to 30 gallons of water a day, so Hamer is worried about how the horses will survive the long, hot summer. To conserve water she has already shut off the ranch’s automatic waterers. Playful horses, especially young ones, will often play with the waterers, causing them to run incessantly. “One horse figured out how to turn the faucet on and off,” she recalled.

But these days, “I just have water barrels out for them,” she said.

Sherry Englund, 28, figured she earned the right to wash her car in the street outside her Northridge home. After all, her faucets all have low-flow heads, her toilet tank has a bag to displace water and her yard has fallen into neglect from lack of water.

Besides, her chocolate Mazda RX-7 had not been washed in over six weeks.

“I was embarrassed,” said Englund, a singer for a rock band, who washed the car for a meeting with her producer. “I had to wash it.”

Times staff writers Steve Padilla and John Chandler also contributed to this story.