The last of the zinnias

They served us well over the summer, but today the zinnias had to go. Last year, we enjoyed beautiful flowers all the way through Thanksgiving. This year, the combination of horrible heat and drought in July, followed by a wet, wet August, left us with scraggly flowers whose leaves were covered with fungus spots. Yuck. So this evening we picked all the blooms left available, and pulled up the rest of the plants as the sun set on us. Somehow, removing them in the dark seemed less tragic. I guess it's because we couldn't see all the flowers we missed at picking time.