I thought fighting the urge to Google the white butterflies would free me. Instead, it ruined my garden

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.

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.

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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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