Opinion
I thought not Googling everything would set me free. Instead, it ruined my garden
Wendy Syfret
Freelance writerI don’t remember when I first noticed the butterflies. Perhaps while watering my garden, or checking the mail, or attempting to revive a gasping pot plant. Maybe I didn’t notice them first at all. It could have been my toddler, shrieking as one darted by.
Whatever it was, soon they were impossible to ignore. Every garden on my street was overtaken by the same white critters. Even the hardest of hearts would have felt like a Disney princess.
My beloved nasturtiums were among the casualties of the cabbage butterflies.Credit: Steven Siewert
In the morning, I’d watch them flit across my sunburnt lawn, enlivening fading foliage with the vibration of wings. Truth be told, I was as delighted as my two-year-old. But while their charm was undeniable, the novelty faded as they crowded every natural and man-made surface in sight.
Standing in my yard one afternoon, my mum offered her perspective on the new residents. “They’re not butterflies, but moths,” she corrected me. “Cabbage moths, in fact.”
Defensive of my mysterious slice of suburban whimsy I countered: “Whatever they’re called, they’re lovely.”
Privately though, I had started to feel uneasy over their ballooning numbers. Whether due to my temperament or generation, I have a tendency to look for the shadow beneath lovely things.
Admiring a brilliant sunset, unseasonably warm day or flower blooming out of season, I’m quick to wonder what ecological horror is behind it. A lifetime entwined with social and natural disasters has taught me that unexplained occurrences are rarely endearing in origin.
Which is probably why initially I resisted the impulse to reach for my phone and Google “cabbage moth explosion”. Deep down, I knew: just as with those sunsets, warm days and out-of-season flowers, the mass influx of my new garden friends was likely not good. When a neighbour attempted to break into small talk with, “what’s with all the butterflies?” I’d change the topic or brush it off: “Who knows, just enjoy it.”
For the first time in my life, I resisted the journalistic urge to investigate and instead asked myself: Do I really need to know? What if this time, I didn’t have a follow-up question? Do I need to bear witness to every grim piece of evidence signalling the decline of our fragile planet? Or, just this once, could I give myself a break and enjoy the sunny days and beating wings?
So I did the most unnatural thing in the natural world. I didn’t look it up.
A cabbage butterfly.Credit: Patrick Honan
At least, I didn’t look it up for a few weeks. Then one morning, when I stepped out to gaze at my sunburnt lawn and fading foliage, I discovered they were no longer faded, but demolished. The brassicas I’d thoughtfully planted ahead of the cool weather were gone. So were the lettuce and kale seedlings I’d expected to free me from supermarket price hikes. Even my nasturtiums, the only flower I grew confidently, were bald.
Overnight, my garden had been emptied, save for the cloud of moths who remained. That was when, at last, I pulled out my phone.
The good news was my mum was wrong, they were in fact butterflies. But the rest of the news was bad. While I was feeling like a Disney princess, they were stealthily cultivating caterpillars under leaves and out of sight.
Ironically, by the time I spotted their wings and started to worry, it was too late. They’d already been gorging on my garden for weeks.
As feared, the explosion in population was nefarious and climate-related. A mild winter meant an unprecedented amount of their larva had survived the life cycle. These were further nurtured by an unseasonably warm spring.
I’m not sure if knowing any of this sooner would have saved my garden. Even if I had followed suggestions to deter them by littering my yard with plastic bags tied to bamboo stakes, they’d still have bloomed on my neighbour’s property and likely made their way over the fence to feast.
But not knowing didn’t help me either. My aggressive naivete didn’t protect me, or even give me the brief reprieve from anxiety I’d hoped for. The deep gnawing instinct that something was wrong was too strong, too well-tuned.
In the end, my fantasy hadn’t brought peace or protection. It just destroyed my nasturtiums.
Wendy Syfret is an author and freelance writer based in Melbourne.
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