If you’re like me, you started off the gardening season with high hopes in the spring. You dutifully prepared your garden beds and planted your seeds, dreaming of the healthy plants and perfect vegetables you’ve seen on websites and in magazines. But by midsummer, the inevitable battles with Texas heat, drought, plant-munching insects, and various blights and diseases dampened your enthusiasm for gardening. And by Labor Day you were relieved to pull out the shaggy, overgrown, not-so-perfect-looking plants, hang up the gardening tools for winter, and plan for better things next year!

Although this desire to "call it a season" after fighting your way through summer's gardening challenges is certainly understandable, there's good reason to press on and plant a fall garden.

A hobby can bring tremendous joy and satisfaction to moms, especially during stressful seasons like the one we're currently in! Do you have one? If not, here’s how to choose one--or possibly more than one--that suits you.

A hobby should be something that when you get up in the morning on your day off (whatever being "off" means to you), you will relish in saying "Hurray! Today I can enjoy my hobby," or "I can't wait to get the kids in bed”, because your hobby is waiting for you. You should be so absorbed when doing your hobby that you might even lose track of time!

Finding the right hobby takes a little thought and experiment. Start by making a list of all the possible hobbies you even think you would be interested in. Search your mind back to when you were younger too; maybe you decorated a vintage dollhouse as a child and really enjoyed it. Maybe your drawing or painting was hung in the hall at your grammar school because it was so good. Also have a look at the activities your friends and loved ones enjoy as their hobbies. At this point, you just want to list some possibilities, no matter how odd they may seem.

Ask yourself these questions about each hobby on your list: