A woman finds that her flowers have turned into a place for frogs to stay.

People in Snohomish, Washington, know it’s spring when the last bit of snow melts and bright flowers start to grow. Still, Allison Lamb’s first clue always comes from a noisy but cute neighborhood group.

Lamb told The Dodo, “We know it’s spring when we hear all the frogs croak.”

Lamb says that the frogs that come to her home and business, Snohomish Lavender Farm, are many and very busy.

“Flowers line my house, and they’ll climb up the walls and into my hanging flower baskets,” Lamb explained.

Some days, Lamb will even find a frog or two hopping around her house.

But when she looked at her flower yard one day, she was shocked to see a frog doing something she had never seen before: he was resting in one of her dahlias.

Lamb said, “I was happy to see a frog sleeping in one of my dahlias.”

Lamb grows more than 200 dahlias on her farm. She was pleased to learn that the flowers are useful for more than just bees’ pollen; they’re also great places for frogs to stay.
Here is where you can see the frogs cozy up in their hotel:

Lamb said, “I kept seeing more and more as the summer went on.” “Frogs would hide in my flowers every day, and there would be more than 10 of them.”

In the spring and summer, Lamb and her kids spend most of their mornings in their flower yard looking for pacific tree frogs. They enjoy having the frogs come to visit because it makes them happy.

The frogs that live in the dahlias’ small flower pockets aren’t just there for fun, though. They are very important for keeping the flowers in the yard alive and well, especially the dahlias.

“The frogs eat the bad bugs for me,” declared Lamb.

Of course, there are other animals that live in Lamb’s flower yard with the frogs.

“Bees sleep in my dahlias at night, and I also find little spiders and gardener snakes up in my flowers last year,” Lamb said. “I also have a praying mantis and a few salamanders. In the late summer, there are caterpillars all over the place.”

 

But for Lamb, there’s nothing better than the frogs that like to sleep in her flowers. She loves seeing them sleep in the leaves with their little green heads sticking out. It makes her sad when summer ends and they go away.

Lamb said, “They stay in the flowers all season until the first frost, at which point the flowers die.”

When it gets too cold, the frogs leave, but Lamb knows they’ll be back in the spring. She also hopes that her flower hotel will have even more people next year.