Sitting on my front porch sipping a glass of wine on one of the first truly spring evenings of the season, I find myself staring in amazement. No, I’m not looking at the beautiful sunset or anything hokey like that, I’m contemplating a tiny chive plant that has survived yet another difficult Buffalo winter. It’s one of the first herbs I planted when I moved into this house six summers ago. It was originally just a few shoots connected to a small clump of root when I pushed it into the ground, but now each year it grows so large that I have to cut it back, lest it intrude on valuable real estate in my teeny garden. Each winter its roots hibernate under a blanket of snow, ice, and frozen ground, yet without fail the following spring it pushes back through the soil reaching for the sun, and grows bright green with beautiful purple blossoms.

The 16th-century French monk Brother Lawrence (born Nicholas Herman) had such a profound experience while staring at a barren tree on a bleak winter’s day—knowing that the tree, stripped of its leaves and seemingly dead, would be renewed and blossom in the spring—that he had a religious vision, a conversion. He was eventually accepted into a monastery where he spent many years as head cook, and is said to have never lost his sense of awe.

I am in no way implying that I had such an intense revelation while staring at my little cluster of chives, nor is this what led me to a life in the kitchen, but I couldn’t help but consider this: Even after the most brutal winters, each spring these delicate little shoots push through the hard soil and reach for the sun as if it is their only purpose on this earth.

Along with onions, garlic, and other pungent shoots and bulbs—oddly including asparagus—chives are part of the allium, or lily, family. Plants from this botanical family have had as much lore and controversy surrounding them as a film star: They’ve been said to be everything from a natural antibiotic to hair-growth tonic and even vampire repellent. And while their more pungent cousins, garlic and onions, have been used as folk medicine for eons, chives are more often considered the refined, or subtle, family member. According to the late food writer, Waverley Root, in his encyclopedic book simply titled Food, one John Randolph, “a gentleman of Virginia” (circa 1770), was a proponent of chives instead of onions. In his book, A Treatise on Gardening, he spoke of them surviving the harsh winters and also claimed that, unlike garlic and onions, “chives left no trace on the breath.” But the best part, I think (besides the fact that they don’t make you cry when you cut them), is their delicate onion flavor.