It was an average day of gardening for one 82-year-old resident of Bad Müenstereifel, Germany. The man was tending to his carrots when he managed to unearth something he never thought he'd see again — and certainly not on a carrot.
When he pulled up a plump carrot from the soil, he noticed that it was oddly shaped, sort of bulbous, as though something had stunted its growth and it had to make do.
Then he noticed the sparkle.
Flash back to three years ago. Just after this man and his wife had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, he realized that that the wedding band he'd worn for so long was missing from his finger. The couple kept an eye out for it, but it never turned up.
And then, two-and-a-half years after losing the ring, the wife sadly passed away. Without her cheerful optimism that it would turn up, the man simply stopped looking for it, believing it was lost forever.
What he didn't know, though, was that it was patiently waiting under the soil in the carrot patch the whole time.
Jewelry has a funny way of turning up in odd places, as this man now knows, as well as the couple who found some diamonds inside an old, second-hand chair.
See the incredible photos of the ring-bearing carrot below!
[H/T: My Modern Met, WDR]
About six months after losing the wedding band he'd worn for 50 years, a man in Germany stopped looking for it.
His wife had passed away, and after her death, he simply stopped hoping to see its familiar twinkle.
One day, he decided it was time to tend to his patch of carrots in the garden, and so he set to work pulling some fresh, orange carrots from the soil.
Then he saw one carrot that made him stop everything.
The carrot had grown malformed, thanks to something in the soil pinching it.
That “something” was none other than the wedding band, lost so long ago.
And now here it was again, winking at him in the sunlight.
He thinks it must have slipped off his finger while gardening those two years ago.
As luck would have it, a baby carrot then grew inside the ring, which allowed him to pull it — and the ring — up put of the soil at the end of the season.
Carrots are very adaptable when it comes to encountering obstacles in their growth.
Normally, it's rocks and other roots, and they'll twist and turn to work around whatever's in their way.
In this case, the carrot grew through the ring and continued downward into the soil.
And while wedding rings have turned up in pretty strange places, this actually isn't the first time one has turned up on a carrot.
In 2011, Lena Påhlsson of Sweden found her wedding ring, which had been missing for 16 years, on a carrot in her garden.
It seems carrots make great ring catchers!
In Germany, the man is overjoyed to have finally found his lost ring, and in such an unexpected and strangely beautiful way.
When asked, he said simply, "You reap what you sow," and we think that's a pretty good way of putting it.
SHARE this lost and found story with anyone who's ever found something in the last place they'd ever expect.
