Season’s finale

This season has brought one of the best displays of autumn color in years, largely the result of warm days and cool but not cold nights.

Here, a display of zinnias near Cannon Hill Park on Spokane’s South Hill shows remnants of the plant’s intense summer color even as mildew slowly eats away at the flower heads.

The Spokane urban area has yet to see widespread frost, allowing zinnias and some other frost-sensitive summer annuals to continue blooming in landscape pots, yards and parks.

They are providing an attractive ground-level counterpoint to the bright yellows, reds and oranges of autumn leaves, which also benefit from the kind of weather seen this fall.

A change in store for Monday is likely to bring nighttime freezing temperatures, putting an end to the delicate beauty captured here.

Mike Prager