A Swedish woman got the surprise of a lifetime when she pulled a small carrot out of her garden at home. Fit snugly around the carrot was the wedding ring she had lost 16 years ago.

Lena Paahlsson told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that she "had given up hope" that she would ever  find the ring she had lost in 1995, according to the BBC. 

The ring, a white gold band with seven small diamonds, had been designed by Paahlsson herself.  She had been doing some Christmas baking with her daughters when the ring disappeared so many years ago, the BBC reports.

The family looked everywhere and eventually even had the kitchen floor pulled up during renovations in the hope of finding the ring.

It wasn't until recently, while  Paahlsson was gardening at her farm in central Sweden, that she found the long-lost  ring around a carrot.

"The carrot was sprouting in the middle of the ring. It was quite incredible," Paahlsson's husband, Ola Paahlsson, told the paper.

The couple believes the ring could have been lost in vegetable peelings that were turned into compost, according to the BBC. The ring no longer fits  Paahlsson, but she is planning to have it resized.

"Now that I have found the ring again, I want to be able to use it," Lena Paahlsson told the paper.