Newly planted lilac bushes along lilac lane, pictured Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015.

I have applied my investigative reporting skills to Kansas University’s Lilac Lane situation and can now confirm that the lilacs have, in fact, been replanted as promised. (And by investigative reporting, in this case what I really mean is taking 15 minutes to drive up to campus Tuesday afternoon and investigate.)

There are more than six dozen new bushes along the Fraser Hall side of the lane, from Jayhawk Boulevard to the cul-de-sac by Blake Hall. They’re more numerous than the old bushes — which had gotten pretty gigantic and kind of unruly — but will never grow as large, because the newly planted bushes are dwarf varieties.

The old lilacs were removed back in August, and at the time university landscape architect and project manager Marion Paulette told me they would be replanted around late September.

Check.

As long as the new lilacs don’t take an unexpected turn for the worse over the winter, KU campus-goers shouldn’t have to go a spring without enjoying the scent of them on historic Lilac Lane.

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Footnotes

• Business professor emeritus dies: KU School of Business professor emeritus Larry Sherr, 74, died on Sunday. “Larry willingly shared his expertise, when asked, and provided input and ideas to encourage better teaching skills, especially to new faculty members,” business dean Neeli Bendapudi said in an email to school colleagues, adding that former students and TAs have raised funds to donate a classroom in the new Capitol Federal Hall in Sherr’s honor. Services for Sherr are planned for Thursday. His obituary appeared in Tuesday’s Journal-World and is online here.

• Delta State motive ‘continues to elude’: The Chronicle of Higher Education visited the Delta State University campus in the wake of the fatal shooting of history teacher and KU alumnus Ethan Schmidt. An article they published Tuesday has more nice words about Schmidt, a little speculation about the mental state of his suspected killer and fellow teacher Shannon Lamb (who authorities say killed himself after killing his girlfriend and Schmidt), still no explanation for what problem Lamb would have had with Schmidt. Only this:

The killings have been particularly
confounding in part because a motive
continues to elude investigators, who
quickly ruled out a rumor that the
professors and Ms. Prentiss were in a
love triangle. Mr. Schmidt’s
colleagues find that particular
suggestion, widely reported in the
first day of news-media coverage, to
be baseless and cruel, unnecessarily
compounding grief for the victim’s
wife, Elizabeth A. Skolaut Schmidt.

“In the end, it was a mental illness,”
says Paulette A. Meikle, chairwoman of
the division of social sciences and
history. “Ethan was not a target. I
think he found himself in the wrong
place at the wrong time. It could have
been any one of us, and that is why
it’s so perturbing.”

• Murphy Hall losing its Jay Break: Despite a student petition to keep it open, the Jay Break in Murphy Hall will close at the end of this semester, The University Daily Kansan reports. A KU Dining official told the Kansan that the location lost $5,000 last year and that once the De Bruce Center opens, students will be able to cross the street and get snacks there.

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Contact me

I take feedback and KU news tips by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187 or on Twitter @saramarieshep.