Parable of the abstract gardener

Half of the cabbages in the garden are being eaten by caterpillars of the small white butterfly. The other half are being eaten by those of the large white.  Many of the plants have been altogether stripped of their leaves and are now reduced to mere stalks. It is an infestation. A plague. My sympathy is wholly with the cabbages. I wish for nothing but to see them healthy and untroubled by pests. But I am not hungry. I do not need the cabbages in the way the caterpillars need them. And that is what prevents me from taking action. I recognise that any intervention I might consider to rescue my crop would be motivated only by a desire for order. And if I killed the caterpillars it would be to implement in the cabbage patch only my sense of abstract justice. Do I so believe in the Law that I am prepared to extact vengence upon these pitiful and greedy life-forms? If I am not hungry for cabbages, then am I really so voracious for justice? These are the questions I ask myself. I have often thought of abandoning my obligations to the garden. At other times I have found myself wishing for the outside intervention of some agency ready to do the dirty work of policing my world for me - wasps and birds striking at the pests from the air might once have proved effective. But it is already autumn and the wasps are now dead, whilst bird populations have catastrophically declined in recent years as a consequence of the use of pesticides, against caterpillars. Then, I am at a loss. To be sure, I am already involved here - the cabbages are the result of my distant action of planting them. They are mine, they have issued forth from my will. But, what is it exactly that I am expected to defend in all this? My garden is an artificial space, and any intervention to secure it would only take it further away from what it should be.