(UPI) A ring that slipped from a Maine girl's finger while she was planting a garden turned up nine months later -- wrapped around a piece of garlic.

Madison Cooper, 12, said she lost the ring while planting garlic at the Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset in October.

The ring had been a gift to her grandmother, Leanita Perry, from her late grandfather in 2012, and Perry had given the ring to Cooper after the grandfather's death.

"It was a Valentine's Day gift from my husband back in 2012. She really wanted the ring because her and papa were really close, so I gave it to her," Perry told WCSH-TV. When she told me she lost it, it was heartbreaking, but things happen and it wasn't her fault.

The family never expected to see the ring again, but nine months later Hannah Marshall, a Chewonki Foundation Outdoor Educator, was harvesting the garlic and spotted something shiny on one of the plants.

"I was sent out to harvest the garlic, and I pulled up one of the final plants and I saw something shiny around the bottom, and at first I thought, 'It must be trash,'" Marshall told WGME-TV.

She said she was shocked to see it was a ring wrapped around the plant.

"It was a total coincidence that the garlic kind of captured the ring as it grew through the straw that they helped put down," Marshall said.

Perry said the ring's return was a good omen.

"When the call came, it was 23 months after the day that he passed away, so it was like an omen, it was meant to be, she was meant to get that ring back," Perry said.

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