I tucked the empty seed bags under my arm and leaned over to pick a daffodil. It was the oldest signal of hope I had ever known. My grandmother, Mimi, had loved her “daffies” so much, she’d painted her kitchen—and her cottage—to match them.

In 1958, Mimi took a bouquet of real daffodils into the local paint store in McComb, Mississippi to match the exact color. She set the flowers on the counter. “Can you mix this shade?” she asked, looking up at the clerk.

”Um, well,” said George-Allen Snodgrass, blinking at the flowers. A flush ran up his neck and lodged in his jowls.

“I’m thinking of painting my cottage the color of a daffodil,” she told him. Then she reached into a paper sack and pulled out indigo hyacinths, all of them wrapped in a dripping wet pink handkerchief. ”And these for the shutters,” she said. “But three shades lighter. And a smidgen more green.”

“Oh, if only I could match a paint color to that smell,” he said.

Last fall, I planted a thousand bulbs, and each bloom resurrected something inside me. Just when I didn’t think my faith could last another season, I’d see them push through the thick mulch, and I knew I could keep going.

Since 1958, I haven’t stopped talking or writing about Mimi’s daffodil-colored life. My handwritten journals and Joy Lessons memoirs are filled with notes about her cottage and sunny kitchen—and those hyacinth-colored shutters. Of course, my whole family lived this history, and it has inspired at least six daffodil-colored kitchens.