That's terrible bobbygil! I wish we could send some of our rain down to you. It's raining right now. Good luck!

Bobby, I know your pain as we in NC are having the same drought conditions. So far however, in my area, we are being asked to conserve water and don't have an outright ban. Can you water at all by hand or is there a total ban? I use drip irrigation and soaker hoses and I think that helps a lot with prevention of evaporation. If you are in a total ban on water use, then using gray water is about the only thing you can do. Clematis, like most plants, are survivors and will brown out and drop leaves to help conserve moisture. I would hesitate to prune anything now as it will stimulate new tender growth that will quickly die. Also fertilization is a big nono since it will stimulate growth. All we can do is cross our fingers and either hope we get the rain we need or get a major soaking soon! I am trying to look at it as an experiment to see how much water clematis need to survive. They might not look so good right now, but hopefully they will recover when we get the moisture we need.

Yup..its a total water ban. The only water I can use is gray water. It takes alot of gray water to do much of anything.I figure the ban will last at least one year now that they have us on it. Guess I need to look into rain barrels. Problem is we need rain for them to work !!

Yep, know what you mean. Rain barrels do nothing without the showers to fill them!

Over on the Rose Forum, there have been several threads about the drought in your area. One in particular, called "North Georgia now on total water ban", has a post from regpnw7 that contains a lot of great suggestions for how to deal with it. If I were more computer savvy, I'd link it for you, but I think you might find it worthwhile to find that particular post. Good luck!