A few weeks ago I was pottering in the backyard -- admiring this, sniffing that, dancing around the greyhound droppings -- when I noticed my artichoke looking rather limp. 

Sidling up close, I saw hundreds of lime green aphids covering the plant from trunk to head, like an angry rash all raised and scaly.

Bugger, I thought. Sap suckers.

My eyes adjusted to their camouflage and stacks more materialised around the garden. Aphids everywhere.

The internet told me I should spritz affected plants with neem oil or high pressure hose the little blighters into next week.

Grandma recommended poisoning the ants that farm the aphids then to ‘stop messing about with vegetables and get a job’.

Monty Don said to do nothing.

Being a pretty lazy gardener, Monty's approach sounded good to me -- so I went inside, made myself a miso, and let nature take its course.

And lo! Behold! Just when I started to think The Don had done me in and all our plants would die, the cavalry arrived.

I spotted a ladybird on a daisy.

Then two.

Then two locked in a multi-day coital piggyback that was equally awkward and impressive.

Then a tangerine cluster of eggs appeared on the underside of a rudbeckia leaf, and not long after there were mini alligators marching up and down stems making a meal of the problem. 

(Have you ever seen ladybird larvae? Reptilian. Remarkable. Really worth Googling. Each one can dispatch hundreds of aphids before it turns into an adult ladybird, so they’re the kind of monsters you want on your team.) 

The whole ladybird life cycle played out in our veggie patch; the same veggie patch bereft of beneficial insects only days before.

The eggs turned to larvae, the larvae became pupae, and two weeks later adult ladybirds emerged looking fly and maintaining backyard balance.

All fuelled by aphids.

All part of an awe-inspiring and self-regulating system one trillion times bigger and smarter than me.

Imagine if I’d sprayed and squashed and shucked the aphids -- fave ladybird food -- in a bid to control and correct the situation?

It made me contemplate how often we forge ahead with an intervention believing we know best, when our wisdom is so very feeble and the ramifications so very great. (See: 'civilising' natives, introducing cane toads, putting RoundUp on everything.)

Yep, there are times to act: when Cousin Clay is telling that joke about blondes, when centuries-old trees are being felled for a highway, when you just put a shovel through your shoe...

... but there plenty of occasions where waiting and watching is a totally valid course of action. When Doing Nothing results in something good. Where trust and patience trump traps and poison. 

It's hard to Do Less in a world beguiled by Just Do It. But if the ladybirds have taught me anything, it's that we're not the only beings on this planet with a will and a way. It's not always up to us. We're not all that. How bloody comforting.

So my pledge this year is to do heaps less and see what happens.

If you need me, I'll be ogling insects in flagrante delicto.

What's your approach to 2021?