A diamond engagement ring that was worn for 17 years, then lost, has finally resurfaced – 32 years later – just in time for a couple’s golden wedding anniversary.

The New Zealand Herald reports that Joan Quinn was pottering in her backyard vegetable patch when something small and glittery flashed in the sun and caught her eye.

Joan still remembers the date, 6th June 1976, when she removed the ring to peel potatoes.  Later that night, after dinner was finished and cleared away, she realised that the precious ring was missing, and so Joan and her husband Greg searched through the garden and the compost heap and upturned the bins.  But the ring, featuring three diamonds, could not be found.  The couple even combed the streets and put ads in the local paper, all without success.

Then early in 2009 as their 50th wedding anniversary was approaching, Joan spotted something shiny in the soil, imagining it to be a ring pull from an old beer can, but when she looked more closely she could see that it was her long lost engagement ring.

Greg and Joan had got married back in March 1959, and Joan had faithfully kept it safe for 17 years when it disappeared in 1976.  For the last 32 years Joan regularly turned the soil in her vegetable patch, hopeful of finding the lost diamond ring.

When she appeared from the yard beaming with with a big smile, Greg knew what had happened.  Joan told the New Zealand Herald, “He always thought it would turn up one day”.

Proof perhaps, that a diamond is forever.