Technical oddities

I happened to be talking to a tradesman and the conversation turned to diagnosing problems. About a year ago he purchased a Chrysler 200 for 60% of Kelly Blue Book. It had 4 previous owners but appeared to be well maintained.

Two months later it needed a new battery. Two months after that, it needed another new battery. Then another. The vehicle was eating batteries.

He took many trips to Youtube and consulted AI. Finally, he and his boy simply started disconnecting and reconnecting the terminal on the battery...and then they heard the vehicle make a faint noise that wasn't supposed to be there. It was intermittent. It made that noise only about 20% of the time.

"I know it is strange, but the sound didn't sound like OEM MOPAR. We kept looking."

It was a GPS monitor that the first owner, a car rental business, had installed way up under the dash where it would not be seen by customers. They had not bothered to remove the unit before they sold the vehicle. The tradesman's best-guess is that the unit recorded exactly where the vehicle went and was attempting to find a signal to up-load the data. That kind of information might be useful if there were clauses in the rental contract about not taking vehicles four-wheeling, parking them on ocean beaches or using them to pull stumps.

The tradesman and his boy removed the device and the vehicle no longer eats batteries.

I did not see this with my own eyes so I cannot vouch for its veracity. Consequently, I only present this as an interesting story. If you have a vehicle that eats batteries, try parking it where it gets four bars or figure out a way to disable the GPS transmitter module(s).

Pakistan vs. Missouri revisited

 

 

A few more screen grabs showing the roads that supply the convenience/general store shown in the earlier post.

Various commenters on the earlier post suggested that the photos of the store near Kansas City were cherry-picked to make it look worse than it really was. I agree...but when was the last time you were in a Krogers, Walmart, Meijers or IGA and you saw so many empty shelves, especially in the high revenue-per-square-foot produce and meat sections? Maybe during the depths of Covid shutdowns but other than that, never.

If a store in B.F. Pakistan can look THAT well stocked while the store in Missouri which is 1.4 miles from Exit 5-A off of I-70 looks that bad, especially after the taxpayers sank $29 million of subsidies into it... I just have to shake my head in dismay.

Another commenter asked "...which regulations would you like to see peeled back and why?" Frankly, I would like to see all regulations wiped off the books and replaced with regulations which in their totality can be read-and-understood by a person with 5th-grade reading ability in fifteen minutes.

My reasoning is that the majority of the people working on the grocery store floor are not college graduates...They are not MBAs nor do they have degrees in Biology. Sadly, the median American now has a sixth-grade reading ability. Most of the people working on the floor of the grocery store probably have lower reading comprehension skills than the median American. Having grown up watching Pee-Wee Herman, they also have stunted attention spans. So why would you write regulations that THEY cannot understand when they are the heavy-lifters where the work gets done?

Another perspective is that Communists have multiple, highly divergent personalities. One minute they are crying a river-of-tears about wealth inequity and food deserts. The next minute they are writing another two-hundred pages of regulations that pretty much guarantee that new, family owned grocery stores die in utero because they cannot afford a "legal compliance office" to create documentation showing that they complied with every detail. 

Existing businesses love regulatory moats. It reduces competitive pressures.

OK, I can see some of my readers swooning. "It can't be done!!! Food safety is complicated!!!! The regulations are complicated because it is a complicated subject."

Food safety is actually pretty simple until you start trying to carve out every exception and technical oddity. I agree that expressing complex ideas with simple, declarative sentences using the 12,000 most commonly used words in the English language can be difficult. BUT IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. Just because you cannot do it doesn't mean that it cannot be done.

Windows 10 IoT Enterprise

I was having lunch with some of my former coworkers when conversation turned to the vast number of devices that will be rendered vulnerable to security breeches when Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10.

The general belief is that Windows 11 is a resource hog in the typical, default configuration. There are ways to skinny-it-down but there is always the risk of somebody performing a reboot and vaporizing all of the tweaks, thereby paralyzing the device(s).

One of my friends provides computer expertise to a small footprint of equipment...somewhere between $0.5M and $1.5M of equipment. All of the devices carry mission critical CPUs and none of them have enough resources to be upgraded to stock, MS Windows 11.

He informed us that Microsoft is aware of the issue and has a solution. He does not know if his class of equipment qualifies for the solution...but he is looking very, very hard at it.

The solution is called Windows 10 I-o-T (Internet-of-Things) Enterprise and its genesis may have been sparked by the vast number of Automatic Teller Machines that cannot run Windows 11 and yet they must be secure (i.e. supported with security patches). Although the issue may have started with ATMs, many other users are now demanding this "low feature" Windows 10 so they would not have to scrap-out functional equipment and spend the money to replace that equipment solely because the old equipment's operating system had been abandoned by MS.

The devices have very simple needs. Ethernet communication. Ability to write to a log and display results on a low resolution monitor at 30fps. Maybe talk to GPS. In most instances, the users don't  want WIFI or to have other devices find and try to shake-hands with it. It does not need to support a bunch of USB ports or manage files with foreign formats.

I wish MS would ease the restrictions on 10 IoT and let us switch our fleet of lap-tops to it.

Bonus Link 

I thought I was out of the moving business

Southern Belle found a bedroom set in an itty-bitty town 45 miles from Eaton Rapids. She negotiated with the lady selling the furniture to pick it up Wednesday. She asked for my help.

The owner of the furniture and her twin sister had purchased the duplex ten years ago and her sister died last November. That left the seller with four (yes, four) bedrooms full of furniture since both sisters had their own room plus a guest room.

It was an old house with low doors and scroll work in the corners. She had shelves filled with antique glass bottles. And of course the bed was a king. So, Wednesday night Southern Belle, Handsome Hombre, Quicksilver and I lugged the furniture out of the surviving twin's guest bedroom and thence through her quaint-and-quirky house. The task was fraught with many twists-and-turns to snake the loads out of the house. Another issue was having to lower the loads so we didn't bang into the lintels of the doors nor bump any shelves chock-full of glass bottles.

It was dark when we got back to Eaton Rapids and there was no chance of rain that night nor the next morning. I went home and left the young people to entertain themselves.

Looking out the window in early afternoon, yesterday, I noticed the tree branches getting blown around pretty good. I popped open a weather site on the internet and it predicted a 100% chance of rain at 7:00.

I called Southern Belle and asked if they had moved the furniture inside.

She responded "Nope. Handsome is at work. Why?"

I mentioned the possibility of rain at seven and wondered when Handsome would be home from work.

One thing led to another and I ended up helping Southern Belle get the mattress and dressers and cabinet inside. We didn't get them up to the second floor but we got them under cover.

The rain hit at 4:00 and it was a gully-washer.

Today feels like it will be a four-ibuprofen day. 

Comparing a store in one of Pakistan's poorest districts to one in Missouri

 

A convenience store in Pakistan's Hindu Kush mountains (Source of images)

Pakistan is nominally "capitalist"

The region is very remote and impoverished

 

Government/NGO run store in Missouri after "millions of dollars invested"

Source

Bonus Link

Living 30 days like a Cuban (circa 2010)

Visions of Efficient Government Delivery of Groceries

 

All meat is some form of chicken nuggets or fish-sticks due to economics and law-suites from Muslims or Hindu when pork or beef is offered.

No bones allowed because they can be sharpened on the concrete to form shivs. That is the same reason that they are eaten with flimsy, plastic sporks; they are difficult to weaponize.

More than the USDA suggested servings of vegetables and vegetable-based proteins which can lead to excessive flatulence.

Hat-tip to my friend MTV. He told me "When a socialist says 'government run grocery stores', it is a euphemism for 'soup lines'.' I just took the idea one step farther. 

Busy, busy, busy.

I am scurrying about trying to get things done outside. The maximum heat index today is expected to be 12 degrees lower than tomorrow

I got a call from the gentleman who is doing our bathroom remodel. He gently asked where the mixing valve for the shower was. The supplier had not notified us that Fed Ex had delivered it, using the lame excuse "The Fex Ex man did not properly scan it into OUR system." 

It is all good now. The parts are in-hand and the contractor knows that.

This afternoon will be taken up with picking up sticks in the orchard, broadcasting ground limestone. This evening will be taken up with helping Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre picking up some more furniture.

Pursuant to Michael's comments about heat exhaustion in-the-sandbox, our soldiers carry obscene loads when on patrol with 80 pound packs being a starting point. They also don't always have the option of hanging out in the shade (Hey, where would YOU plant an improvised, explosive device?). 

Another thing that might hamper our soldiers is that their clothing is not designed to facilitate evaporative cooling whereas I can wear loose-fitting tee-shirts, floppy-sloppy shorts and a big straw hat.

I don't say all of those things to minimize heat exhaustion or heat stroke but simple to note that there are mitigating factors. 

A few pictures, weeds and "How to Encourage White Clover"

 

Image of tomato plants taken on June 8, 2025

Same tomatoes. The feedlot panels are 50" tall to give you a size reference.

Pulling weeds

It is good practice to shake as much dirt off of the weed's roots as possible

Then, if you are going to be lazy and sheet-compost (i.e. drop them on the ground) at least have the foresight to shingle them so the roots are separated from the dirt by the previous bunch of weed's tops.

The more experienced gardeners will notice that these weeds are very large and should have been dealt with when they were younger. We do what we can, when we can.

 

Encouraging White Clover

I want to elaborate on what I think it takes to manage an orchard floor to encourage White Clover.

In most places where White Clover grows, adding seeds is optional according to F.W. Owen. White Clover has an exceptionally high percentage of "hard seed" that requires many years to break dormancy. If you have any doubts, a pound of seed goes a long, long way with about 750,000 seeds per pound. Ladino Clover is a giant form of White Clover and is very acceptable for orchard floors.

Since the seeds are very small (approximately 1/750,000 of a pound each) they don't have a lot of reserves. That means that favorable, fertile soil must be at the very surface.

White Clover is not happy with low-pH soil. Since acid rain leaches magnesium and calcium carbonates (the primary pH buffering agents in the 6.0-7.5 pH range) out of the top layer of the soil first, it is worth your time to broadcast pulverized lime or dolomite but not work it into the soil. Lime is cheap. The cheapest lime available in small quantities locally is used in barns to improve traction. I paid $3.99 per 50 pound bag today at TSC.

White Clover roots cannot compete with grass roots for Potassium or Phosphorous. Some places have potassium as the bottleneck nutrient. Other places are deficient in phosphorous. Clover hay exports four times more potassium than phosphorous, so if you are a betting man then you would bet that potassium is more likely to be a bottleneck than phosphorous. Since the seedling's roots cannot compete with grass, there must be a surplus of potassium and phosphorous in the top half-inch of soil.

As a sidenote, the addition of lime will INCREASE the availability of phosphorous in most soils, so even if the phosphorous is marginal, you are making what is there more available with the limestone. 

Potassium and Phosphorous are expensive. 6-24-24 fertilizer runs about $32 per fifty-pound bag. a 40 pound bag of 0-0-60 (potassium) might cost you $60. You don't need a lot because you are only trying to supplement the top 1/2" to get your White Clover seedlings going, but you probably need some. My philosophy is to over-do the cheap limestone and be stingy with the more expensive P and K, using it in dribs-and-drabs to find the minimum amount required to get the desired response.

White Clover needs direct sunlight and it is too short to compete with tall grass. Manage the grass species to favor shorter species like Bluegrass, Red Fescue or Perennial Ryegrass with mowing. If you cannot see your shoelaces when you are standing in the grass, the White Clover cannot see the sun.

White Clover is drought sensitive. Short grass species like Bluegrass, Red Fescue and/or Perennial Ryegrass go dormant during dry spells and that keeps the grass component and the White Clover in sync with each other. Additionally, neither component will have deep, plunging roots that will compete with your fruit trees during dry spells. They will green up nicely when the fall rains come.

Mowing the orchard floor frequently discourages rodents. Rodents girdle young trees. Rodents are BAD. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

July 18 was Nelson Mandela Day. That made me think of mandalas.

Which reminded me of a toy that was heavily advertised in my youth, the Spirograph.

 Spirograph art.

Boosting the Signal

This essay from The Provident Prepper is well thought-out and well presented.

The Three Pillars of True Preparedness

Before we dive into the scale, let’s establish what real preparedness looks like:

• Skills: Not just knowledge, but tested, practiced abilities that you can execute under stress.
• Resources: Organized, accessible supplies that you’ve actually used and know work.
• Sustainability: The length of time you can maintain your standard of living with minimal outside support.

Levels of preparedness

Unprepared: You might make it to breakfast

Insufficiently prepared: You might make it to dinner

Slightly prepared: Maybe half a week.

Somewhat prepared: Not totally devastated by week-long grid failure

Modestly prepared: Safe but requires a LOT of effort

Partly prepared: Safe living with modest effort (maybe three month duration)

Reasonably prepared: Safe living with minimal outside support (maybe six month duration)

Seriously committed to being prepared: Indefinite time with outside support. Already exercising decoupling skills (like producing your own electricity, water, fuel, food, entertainment). 

And while you can quibble about where the author drew the lines, it is a short and entertaining essay that isn't hard to read. 

 

Mid-summer update

I think of July 15 as the middle of summer. It is a good time to take stock of how things are going.

The fact that I am a week late in posting this summary pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

I am behind on cutting the grass, pulling weeds, tying up cucumber vines, controlling snails, picking up fallen sticks. The Eaton Rapids orchard is overwhelmed with annual grass, and the grapes have been struggling with Japanese Beetles and fungal diseases.

Compared to the last five years, 2025 has been warm and wet.

Year    GDDb50        Evap-rain

2025    1685            11.1-9.3

2024    1760            11.5-10.7

2023    1478            14.2-5.8

2022    1580            15.1-5.1

2021    1668            10.7-10.2

2020    1594            13.1-8.1 

GDDb50 = Growing Degree Days b50F: a measure of how warm the year is. Data presented is GGDb50 on July 21 for Charlotte, Michigan

Evap-rain is the Evaporative Potential - Rainfall. Data is for the span of time from May 1 until July 21. Data in inches.

On the positive side, many of the fruit trees I transplanted this spring are doing well. The persimmons and the grafted apple trees are modestly exceeding expectations.

Most of the new apple trees show between 15" and 18" of shoot growth on their main stem. An old-time apple grower once shared that his goal was to get 24" of shoot growth on trees while he was trying to grow them to-size and then he fertilized/managed for 12"/year once their canopies were "bumping" the neighboring tree's canopy. I am on-track to hit or exceed that 24"/year target.

Progress on the orchard floor has been fantastic since it was brush-hogged. I broadcast White Clover and Birdsfoot Trefoil seeds, both of which are already present in scattered populations, both of which fix nitrogen from the air. It is my firm belief from when I had cows and sheep that if you manage your pastures to have between 20% and 40% White Clover in the canopy, then everything else falls together (except drought tolerance). White Clover is literally the plant of "...flowing with milk and honey."

Another positive is that the legacy trees that I did not cull have a modest crop-load. The fruit size and color should be excellent this fall as long as we don't get a hailstorm. I am looking forward to identifying varieties and getting some labels posted. 

The new pears I planted have been sulking. Their roots were not very impressive when I planted them and I planted them in the Hill Orchard and they were planted into subsoil that has a thin smear of top soil over it.

Trees on the Hill Orchard also have to contend with Black Walnut roots.

My goal today are to purchase a cart to move mulch, purchase 250 pounds of ground limestone to encourage the White Clover, to mow for two hours and to weed in the garden for at least one hour. 

Modern Monetary Theory explained (simply enough so Sandy, the bartender from Yorktown Heights, can understand)

 

The picture shown above is a bottle of 80 proof (40% alcohol by volume) vodka.

Joe decided to sneak into his dad's liquor cupboard and have a toot. Then he added water to bring the level back up to where it was.

This is what the bottle looks like after Joe took a snort.

After waiting a week, to see if he had been caught, Joe decided to have couple of snorts. He mixed it with orange juice and milk-of-magnesia to make a Philip's Screwdriver.

To cover the evidence of his depredations on the bottle of vodka, Joe added more water.

A week later, Joe invited his friend Mike over. They both had three mixed drinks. Mike had a fondness for root beer, vanilla ice cream and vodka. Joe, being simple in many ways, stuck with Philip's Screwdrivers.

After Mike wobbled his way home, Joe topped the bottle off with water and put it back in his father's liquor cabinet.

The next week, Joe's parents went to work a concession stand at the church picnic. Mike brought over Lisa and Diane, a couple of VERY friendly girls. Half-way through the party, Joe had to add water to the bottle that was more than half empty. Joe herded Mike and the two middle-school girls out the back door when his parents came home early. He barely had enough time to add enough water to bring the bottle from the half-empty mark to full and put it back into the cabinet.

Three days later...

Three days later, Joe was trying to frighten a raccoon away from the family pet's food dish.

The raccoon sunk its needle-sharp teeth into the web of Joe's left hand.

Joe's dad, not being the kind of man to waste money on frivolous wants, took care of cleaning out the wound. He used the bottle of cheap vodka he kept for exactly that purpose. Joe's dad was very impressed that Joe did not even wince as he sluiced out the puncture wounds with the 40% alcohol.

Joe died six months later. Doctors were astounded. Death by rabies is extraordinarily rare in developed countries where everybody knows the risks. 

Presented without comment

 

A few thoughts on "Wealth Inequality"

YouTube is rife with progressives railing about "Wealth Inequity". The most strident say "There will be no peace without justice", which is a not-so-veiled threat. They are very clear: If you have more than they have, they want it and are not afraid to use violence to get it!

Wealth vs Income

People who are economically illiterate use the terms "Wealth" and "Income" interchangeably but there are some key differences.

Income is the amount of money you realize within a given time-period. It is typically in units of dollars-per-hour or dollars-per-month or dollars-per-year.

Wealth, in the financial sense, is the amount of dollars that could be realized if all of your assets were liquidated and turned into dollars.

Elon Musk's wealth might be valued at $346 billion dollars but he might only realize $20 million dollars a year for pocket money. That is 0.006% of his estimated wealth.

Another complication is that if Elon Musk sold off his stock portfolio it would probably torpedo the value of the stocks he owned. If he was forced to liquidate quickly, a lack of buyers (anticipating that Musk would no longer participate as an executive in those companies) might cause the value of the stocks to drop to 10% or even lower of their present value.

So, to keep things simple, let's just talk about income.

"Justice starts with a single step"

If Mr Musk were to level-up his income with the typical household income of Austin, Texas then then each household in Austin would receive a check for about $65 every year.

Then, the Social Justice Warrior (who likely lives in an eastern, legacy city like Philadelphia or Baltimore) pipes up "No, no, NO! Musk must pay EVERY person who are members of the groups that his identity-group damaged. That includes people in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Jackson Mississippi. AND, it can't be just Elon Musk. It has to be EVERYBODY who has income that is more than the average for the group!!!"

Point taken

Every person in the United States who has more, realized, per-capita income than the average income of the United States and Africa must write a check to level that up.

And since a single mother in Baltimore with two children is realizing the income-equivalent of $60k, that means that she is going to have to write a check for approximately $53k to level-up with the 1.5 Billion people in Africa making the PPP GDP/capita/year of $6k with her $60k.

OK, I get that I probably lost many of you with that last paragraph. Let me put the bread-crumbs closer together.

Africa was damaged when slave-traders took their best-and-brightest over to the Western Hemisphere. That means they are in the pool that was damaged and in-line for "reparations". They are just as much of a "victim" as that mom in Jackson, Mississippi.

There are 4.5 people in Africa for every person in the United States. The average "income" in Africa is the equivalent of about $6k/year vs roughly +$60k (if you include transfers and entitlements to "low income" US citizens) in the US. So even the poorest, inner-city mother of two children who receiving over $60k in services, grants and other benefits has 10X more income than the typical Nigerian.

On another axis, in Africa there are approximately 60 motor vehicles per thousand people while in the United States there are 850 motor vehicles per thousand. You might say "Well, I don't own a vehicle so that would not impact me" but consider that motor vehicles deliver food to your grocery store and the Uber or Lyft driver you summons when you need a ride DOES own a vehicle. Imagine how hard it would be to get a ride if you wanted to go more than ten miles if there were fewer than 10% as many cars per person. Leveling-up would entail shipping the majority of our automobiles over to Africa.

While the Social Justice Warriors are ginning up outrage over the inequities between the billionaires and their peer-group, they never consider that on a global scale that they are incredibly wealthy. Or maybe it did occur to them but because drawing the lines around the 'control volume' in that fashion would result in a HUGE loss in income to them, they wish the fact into oblivion.

HEAT!

 

Paducah, Kentucky which is just across the Ohio River from Illinois. Predictions of Peak heat indexes between 103 and 106 Fahrenheit EVERY DAY for the next ten days.

Bonus link

The grid is going to be heavily loaded. Have a plan to beat the heat; curtains pulled, ceiling fans, damp tee-shirts, hydration, hanging out in the basement, floating in a pool or running through the sprinkler. A strategy we use at Casa ERJ is to have a hot-plate/crock-pot/rice cooker outside for cooking. I also have an LP hot-plate as a back-up in case the grid falters.

It might also be worth your while to double-check your power-outage plans. If you are going to run a generator, make sure you will not be breathing carbon-monoxide.

We will be fine in southern Michigan. It isn't going to get nearly as hot here as it is predicted to get in the corn-belt and through the south. 

Eradicating Invasive Plants

I appreciate the comments about the perils of planting Pandora's Box Bamboo.

One of the plants is going into a stand of Reed Canarygrass, itself an invasive plant.

Discussion on eradicating invasive plants

Many plants have a period of time when they are vulnerable to control methods. For instance, Poison Ivy is most vulnerable to mowing and chemical control when it is flowering.

The reason, as best as I can discern, is because individual Poison Ivy plants store up carbohydrates through late summer and fall. Poison Ivy is one of the late-to-leaf-out pests so it is unphased by common control efforts* before June 1 (in Eaton County). Poison Ivy has Jack-in-the-Box growth rates using those stored carbohydrates once it does leaf out. As the first big flush of growth starts to peter out, it flowers.

So if you cut the plant near the ground you starve the roots. The battery is nearly drained. Regrowth will be feeble and more easily beaten back.

The timing is similar for chemical control methods that are applied to leaves. Auxin mimic chemicals (like triclopyr or dicamba) work best when that first flush is extending at its maximum rate (usually after a good rain) and there are lots of full-sized leaves to target with the spray. Glyphosate is best applied to the Poison Ivy canopy in the same time period up until the blossoms drop off. Both types of chemicals will kill Poison Ivy after those periods, but the "kill" will not be as thorough. 

*For Poison Ivy that is climbing trees or walls, the preferred method is to cut the trunk in two places and to pry off the 'stick' between the two cuts. Six inches is plenty of distance. And then to paint the lower, exposed "wood" of the Poison Ivy plant's trunk with undiluted glyphosate or triclopyr concentrate. An alternative is to use a paint brush or trim paint roller to apply the ester formulation of triclopyr concentrate diluted 1:3 with kerosene or diesel fuel directly to the trunk. 18" of trunk is often suggested. For trunks climbing up walls, where you cannot paint the entire circumference then paint 36" of 180 degrees of circumference.

Timing for cut-trunk and trunk painting should be after the leaves fall off.

Bamboo

 

This guy talks about how to smack bamboo. Let it invest the energy into stem growth but as soon as it starts to unfurl leaves...whack it hard!

Phyllostachys heteroclada and parvifolia

Phyllostachys is a genus of bamboo. Several species in that genus are considered "cold-hardy". Two of the species are considered both cold-hardy AND very tolerant of wet soils. Those two species are Phyllostachys heteroclada (horizontal branches) and P. parvifolia (small leaves).

Many people, especially those who favor native plant species HATE bamboo because it is invasive and its height and vigor steamroller native plants.

On the other hand, bamboo is very efficient at turning sunshine into structural materials and it sinks a lot of organic matter into the soil. It also provides prime cover for sheltering wildlife in the winter. A small-holder could do worse than to have a patch of bamboo that they harvest aggressively to keep its footprint in-check.

Southern Belle requested some bamboo plants to provide a visual screen between the busy road and their house. Consequently, she is about to receive a gift of three different species and we are going to have a horse-race. The third species is probably Phyllostachys aureosulcata which is what is growing in my yard.

The plan is to plant P. parvifolia in the most eastern position, the P. heteroclada in the middle position and the P. aureosulcata in the western position. The tops will probably get killed every five years due to "test winters" but will still screen the yard even when dead.

Fake News Friday: Modern Treatment Option for Chronic Venous Insufficiency Syndrome

 

Bananas and Dance Therapy?

Installing a gate

 

The Hinge side of the opening

The Latch side of the opening

The first piece added to the Latch side to build up the newel post

The second piece added to the latch post

As it looks from the side

The third piece added to the latch post to bring it into line with the hinge post

"Floating" the gate in the opening

Adding the latch after installing the hinges (apologies for not taking any pictures of installing hinges)

Adding a "Stop" to prevent over-travel when slammed.

The view from the bottom of the stairs.

The gate was added to prevent the dog and Quicksilver from going on a walk-about together.

Not my best work, but far better than my worst.

One hour, twenty minutes "clock time" to frame the opening and install the gate.