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Backyard Gardener: All about mums

Local Columns

Editor’s Note: A version of this column originally ran on Sept. 20, 2024. Hello, Mid-Ohio Valley farmers and gardeners. Let's talk about the arrival of fall and decorative mums. I love the autumn season, and no decorative plant sets the tone for fall like chrysanthemums (Chrysanthemum x morifolium), the garden mum. Over the past two decades, dozens of new varieties have been introduced, dazzling us with a plethora of colors and flower shapes. We used to refer to these plants as hardy mums because they can be planted and will overwinter in the home landscape. Mums add a pop of color ...

Continue work to end deadly domestic violence crisis

Editorials

The Ohio Domestic Violence Network released its annual fatality count this week, and the news is not exactly good. Sure, the number of domestic violence fatalities decreased by approximately 15% from the previous year. But last year saw an INCREASE of 37%. The number of deaths in the most recent year counted is still the second highest of the past decade. There were 134 fatalities, according to a report by Statehouse News Bureau. Between July 2025 and June 2026, 89 of the fatalities were victims, 45 were perpetrators. The Ohio Domestic Violence Network says more than half of those ...

Lawmakers obligated to tackle school funding, enrollment loss

Editorials

Worried about local school closures and consolidations? How about the Hope Scholarship, or development of a fair school funding formula? It’s all tied to an alarming trend in West Virginia that has resulted in an 18.3% drop in student enrollment in our public schools since 2015. There has been a decrease of 50,765 public school students over 11 years. In fact, there has been a 3.5% decrease (8,270 students) over the past year alone, according to West Virginia Department of Education data. That is not purely a reflection of the overall population trend here. In 2015, there were ...

State lawmakers must face realities of EdChoice spending

Editorials

Lawmakers who never bothered to complete the phase-in of Ohio’s Fair School Funding Plan, or update data that could have helped more equitably fund the state’s public schools, are now also operating with the knowledge that their beloved EdChoice voucher program has been deemed unconstitutional by an appellate court. (Interim state Attorney General Andy Wilson has already said he plans to appeal that ruling to the 6-1 Republican majority Ohio Supreme Court.) If their consciences weren’t already being prodded by the knowledge that they abandoned fair school funding, and that an ...

Editorials

School book ban trends come and go, but there are always groups of people who want to keep their children from having access to reading material that might expose them to new ideas or, worse, ask questions. The problem is particularly bad in Ohio, which ranks third among the states in PEN America’s study of school book bans for the 2025-26 school year. The free-expression advocacy group counted 117 instances of school book bans in the Buckeye State during that period. Only Texas and Florida were worse. Across the country, 11,982 books — 7,370 unique titles — were banned in public ...

District court ruling on EdChoice an opportunity for lawmakers

Editorials

Thursday’s ruling by the Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals that the state’s EdChoice voucher program is unconstitutional will no doubt ruffle some feathers in Columbus. Good. Judge David Leland, who wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, says the program violates the state constitution because it funds a separate school system, according to a report by The Blade, in Toledo. That violates the mandate for a SINGULAR public education system. It was the panel’s opinion that the voucher program also lacks meaningful state oversight, is unavailable to many rural Ohioans ...