We’re in the middle of a plague. Not just in the world of politics but here, at Cloverdale. We’re battling the monolepta beetle, a tiny, hard-shelled insect that sucks the sap from leaves and flowers. Although our garden usually operates in a balanced way, with abundant native wildlife keeping in check anything troublesome,  there are occasional blips, such as these monolepta invasions. You could say that we have only ourselves to blame, as they love the flowers and new shoots of the lagerstroemia, or crepe myrtle, that are not native to Australia. The monoleptas, which are a native species, are not targeting the creamy blossoms of the indigenous quandong trees, after all.

We have quite a few crepe myrtles, most of them planted ten or more years ago. They’re a lovely small tree that have a pretty bark and provide rich leaf colour in autumn but it’s really the summer flowering that we love. Our group of twenty trees should be covered with frothy pink flowers of all hues in summer, a spectacle to rival Bridgerton’s gaudiest offerings, and in mid-December that seemed likely.

But almost as soon as we thought that, the blooms began to disappear. Almost overnight, in fact. It was the same with many of our roses. It was disheartening. Thankfully, after a week or so, when we began to fear the whole garden would be devoured, they were gone. Amazingly, the trees and rose bushes revived, with lots of new leaves and buds. We even hoped that our dell of dreamy crepe myrtles might amaze us as it should. So it was disappointing to see the arrival this past week of yet another wave of these little monolepta menaces.

The birds that live in this garden are usually excellent at dealing with all kinds of problems, but plagues are simply too much for our local population to deal with. Everything is out of kilter. We could zap the plague with pesticides but that would harm so much more than the monoleptas. Some non-toxic treatments help but, really, we have to resign ourselves to losing a summer of flowers. In the scheme of things, it’s not a big deal and next year will, we hope, be different. We’ll go with the flow, knowing the garden will revive in time.

The way nature balances itself is an awe-inspiring thing. It’s what attracted me to the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, where life follows the cycles of the natural world. In Taoism, everything holds within it the germ of its opposite, so that if something gets overly inflated then it will quickly deflate, and vice versa. Yin becomes yang becomes yin, and so on. And as Newton discovered, every action has an equal, opposite reaction. We see this in the way day turns to night and in the cycle of the seasons. In the human world, civilisations rise and fall. There is always ebb and flow. Nothing remains constant. The cycle of boom and bust is apparent in everything, from trends that come and go, businesses that shoot for the stars and soon fail, and even in the celebrity relationships that fizzle after all the media fireworks.

Balance is achieved when we try to work with the cycles of nature. The world is ruled by letting things run their course: it cannot be ruled by interfering, as the Tao Te Ching has it. We accept there might be dark periods of grief and loss in our lives, but we know there will also be joy. It’s when things get extreme that things wobble but that extreme energy will meet its match. It’s not a moral thing, not a matter of good vs evil. A specific energy is simply matched by its opposite, and the speed of that dynamic is determined by how quickly that energy blooms. An unstoppable force will be stopped (and in the case of climate change, that unstoppable force is humankind itself – we are the plague, as David Attenborough has said). Fortunes quickly made are quickly lost. The plague of Trump and his billionaire enablers, with their monolepta attempt to suck the life (and money) out of everything they touch, will be balanced by their failure.

We’re enduring another moment when commonly-accepted order has been disrupted. Which can be a good thing. But with America, I am struck each day by the remarkable way in which decency has been trounced by indecency. People try to hold it to account (the non-toxic approach) but it’s a long road, I fear. So it’s sort of heartening to know that, like my monoleptas and my out-of-whack  garden, order will return. Tyrants rise and fall. Rules-based democracy might fail but rules-based nature never will. I guess that gives some succour.

How do you go with the flow?