Because things looked pretty bleak for the 67-year-old Wilsonville woman, who endured two years of surgeries, rehabilitation, a husband with dementia and time away from her brand-new home.

While basil needs little care to flourish, Smith needed much more. With a leg amputation and ensuing infections, she faced death repeatedly. Twelve times she was rushed to the hospital over two years. Somehow, she always fought her way back.

So, when a CREST truck pulled up into her Wilsonville driveway last month, followed by neighbors John and Susan Schenk, Smith could hardly contain her anticipation.

“I’m so excited, I haven’t slept all night,” she said, squinting in the bright sunlight.

Out of the truck popped Bob Carlson, CREST director, followed by two students from ArtTech High School.

“Hi, I’m Bob,” Carlson said to Smith. “I’m going to build you a box.”

And with that, Carlson consulted with the Schenks and the crew got to work building Smith her own container garden.

“The thing that caused her to rally each time was her desire to have a garden,” said Susan Schenk, Smith’s longtime friend.

Realizing that Smith would have no way to care for the several dozen vegetable seedlings she has been sprouting on her windowsill now that she’s returned to live at home, Schenk went about seeing how she could help her friend.

“I set about to see if I could gather some community resources to build her a raised garden bed that she could tend from her seated walker,” she said. “She cried when I finally spilled the beans about what I was doing.”

Which is what brought Carlson, students Zak Boyle, 18, and Max Dennis, 19, and the Schenks, to Smith’s yard on May 15.

Home Depot in Tigard had donated 90 cubic feet of soil, while Wilsonville’s OrePac donated Trex wood and another neighbor donated wood. CREST donated the labor. Smith brought her own enthusiasm.

“It’s nice to see how people can accomplish something and work together,” Schenk said.

As the work crew dug up and moved Smith’s three-foot tall iris plants, Smith walked back and forth along her sidewalk. She uses a walker and has a prosthetic foot. Doctors said she would probably never walk again. But like she had done so many times before, Smith continued to prove them wrong.

“I had my left leg amputated just below the knee, and now I’m walking again,” she said. “I’m so excited to get to be gardening too.”

Clydene and John Smith were avid gardens for the decades they lived in their Wilsonville home. Three years ago, they sold their home and built another one on adjoining property. But John was diagnosed with dementia.

Clydene developed a bad infection in her foot and within hours of her diagnosis was in the hospital facing amputation. Despair set in, knowing she couldn’t take care of herself and her husband too. He was moved to an Alzheimer’s care facility.

“I’ve always loved to grow things, which is why I put the basil on my windowsill,” Smith said. “I told myself, ‘I can get back to where I was.’”

Friends like the Schenks also improved her attitude.