If you or a friend has a Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog, look in there. It has great growing information including a "germination guide" for most veggies. It graphs the optimum temps for germination and shows a seed photo for MANY veggies....not parsnips, though. I haven't seen this information on their website. You may want to request a catalog just for the growing info and germination guides. A google image search gave this parsnip seed image...just page down a bit in the blog. (see below) Parsnips are outbreeding plants that are insect pollinated. They can cross with other parsnip varieties and with wild parsnips that grow in many areas. Some parsnip seeds are sold that are F1 hybrids. Yours will not produce true to type if they were a hybrid variety or if they crossed with wild parnips in the area. They may or may not produce something that is acceptable to you. Me, well, I'd probably grow them out if I had space. Maybe plant some known seed, also, if great parsnips were important to me. The book Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth is great to look at if you are saving seeds. I borrowed one a few time from the library and just last week received my own copy as a gift :) Here is a link that might be useful: Parsnip seeds, scroll down

You have to host your photo on a site like photobucket.com and then provide the link to it here. Tinypic.com is another site that will host it and you don't have to register there.

antiquesilver - The silver belonged to my mother-in-law, and it is called Royal Danish by International Silver. She probably bought it in the 1950's or 1960's. I have my own silver, so after she passed away almost 2 yrs. ago, I didn't think too much about it. My DH is trying to distribute the estate and was thinking of selling it, but then my daughter said that it might be nice to keep it (she just got engaged on New Year's Eve!), so I guess she's thinking of these things now.

Limewash it instead. It lets some of the natural tones of the brick shine through but gives it a more weathered and natural appearance than a solid paint job will. It actually isn't that difficult to remove, and that would give you that 4" back to the room. Tape down some masonite to protect the floors and get in there with a hammer and chisel. Or pay market labor rates to some temps. A couple of hours and it's gone.