I suppose I'll start with the end.

Should I have allowed the garden to die?  When do you stop watering it?  When do you just let it go?  And now from the window here, I see the tomato plants, all 10 of them hanging like burnt weeping willows from the wires and ties and fence posts I used to support them, driving the posts into the ground with the ear-biting clang of the metal striking down, me in a smelly t-shirt, in the summer, working the dirt for the second time, knowing more but not everything.  So, you stop watering at some point, and you let the garden slump back to the earth.  I wrote that last year.  This year I would write something like this:

Well, there goes the garden.  Thanks, garden.  See you later, garden.  God willing.

I am learning that a successful gardener doesn't rely much on her own knowledge.  A successful gardener relies on the knowledge placed already in the seed, in the dirt, in the water, in the sun, in the wind, and in the worm.  Tell me this secret, and I will leave it alone to do its good work.