Hello Hawkbyte.
First of all, thank y ou for your review. I can assure you that all your comments are taken into consideration and will be "remembered" in my future games. (Learning all the time :-) )
Just a quick remark regarding the guess the verb problem dig/break ground. I ran through the game and although you're right that >dig ground doesn't work. >dig ground with axe will work nicely.
"Also, many puzzles don’t make sense for the character, who logically ought to leave well alone instead of inviting danger."
Quite sensible. "leave sleeping dogs lie" or "Don't stick your nose where is don't belong." But if you had tried to leave the garden at any time during playing, you would have found that you couldn't open the garden gate. So no matter how much you wanted to get the H*** out of there, you'd have to kill the monsters first.
Like I said earlier, this is not an attempt to redeem myself but merely an explanation as to why the game works as it does.
Once again, thanks for your review which is very much appreciated and thanks for playing my game.
Best regards
P/o Prune