The hibiscus flowers are blooming in the garden, and the roses are beginning to flower again too.

They are so beautiful. The depth of colour, the detail within each flower. I find myself pausing to witness them and appreciate the creativity and care that have made this beautiful garden.

And when I walk through the meadows, I experience a beauty that moves me deeply, in a different way. Every few weeks, something new is flowering. There are purple asters and goldenrod now, and countless other flowers whose names I am still learning. They arrive as a surprise, a gift, each with an elegance of their own, each offering something to the meadow, and beyond.

Tall purple thistles have emerged in the meadow this year. A lot of them. Their flowers are now giving way to soft white seed heads. I am seeing many more monarch butterflies here this year than last. Sometimes there are a dozen at a time around the patches of thistles, feeding on their flowers. So beautiful. Awe. Watching them together, I feel a harmony and a love between these lives that is hard to put into words. A love song.

Prince Edward County is an important stopping place on their migration to Mexico. At Prince Edward Point, thousands of monarchs feed and rest in late summer and early autumn before continuing south. Thistle flowers provide nectar for that journey. Watching the butterflies in my own meadow, I feel a deeper appreciation for what this land and these flowers are offering.

I watch the bees through the many seasons of flowers, moving from the lavender to the Russian sage, and on and on. As one flowering gives way to another, life continues to find its way to what is opening. Day by day, week by week, month by month, there is an ongoing melody of beauty and creativity playing out around me. It is magic to watch these lives dance, each in its own way and together, in their profound beauty.

As a child on the farm, I was taught to dislike the thistles and burdock bushes. We were taught to cut the thistles down. And at the same time, my parents, with their deep Eastern European roots, also carried an appreciation for what nature gifts us. There was wild mint. My father made cream from calendula flowers. He collected stinging nettles and made nettle tea. My parents also made and drank Swedish bitters from German wild herbs as part of their health routine. Alongside what we were taught to remove, there was a knowing about what nature offered and how to receive its beauty.

Now I am standing among the thistles I was taught to cut down, feeling awe. I see their colour and form, and the life moving between them. I find myself wondering how much beauty I have walked past, perhaps because I had already decided what I was looking at or where I needed to go.

I still feel a profound appreciation for human creativity and talent. I love making things with my own hands, and a garden can be a beautiful expression of that creativity and love. Yet I also see how much we shape life around an image we carry of what it should look like and what it should be. We choose what belongs and what we will remove. I wonder where the pleasure of creating becomes a need to control, and how much our ego influences what we are willing to call beautiful.

In the meadow, I feel a different relationship with creation. I am witnessing a beauty that has emerged through nature and the divine, with a life and a rhythm of its own. Each flower expresses what it is, and each life is part of a melody larger than itself. As I slow down, I feel part of that melody too.

There is a line in A Course in Miracles that speaks to what I am experiencing: “The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder.”

I have been thinking about unconditional love, and witnessing and reflecting on what feels like unconditional beauty. A beauty that belongs to life before I decide what to make of it. The thistle is already fully itself. Its beauty does not begin with my appreciation, or with what it offers the monarch. Something changes in me when I give myself space to receive it.

Through The Sincerely Show, and through the people I meet in daily life, I experience something similar. As I slow down, listen to someone’s story and feel something of their essence and soul, I am moved by their authentic beauty. Their story opens a way for me to see them more fully. I feel such an honour in being allowed to witness another human being in this way.

I wonder how much of life I have seen through ideas I inherited about what was beautiful, what was desirable, what belonged. And how much those same ideas have shaped the way I have seen other people and myself.

What becomes visible when I give another person room to reveal themselves, and give myself room to see?

I feel a new appreciation for what we discover when we offer ourselves that same space, that same curiosity and love. Space to hear what is true within us, beneath the expectations we have carried and the ways we have learned to measure life and ourselves.

As I have come to understand and love more of my own essence, I seem more able to recognise and appreciate the beauty in others, throughout creation.

This is what I am beginning to understand as unconditional beauty. The beauty that lies within each of us and throughout creation, becoming visible as we loosen our expectations and allow ourselves to see. When I walk the meadow now, I feel a profound honour in being here, in witnessing this life and feeling myself part of it. The melody continues, and I get to sing and dance with it.