Stone Harbor will hold its first Harvest Festival 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29. The highlight will be hayrides along the beach. The pick-up spot is in front of the Stone Harbor Firehouse at 96th Street and Second Avenue.

Throughout the day, there will be pumpkin painting, Halloween arts and crafts, a farmers market, artisans and a Halloween magic show.

Workshops demonstrate how to attract birds, butterflies with landscaping

Gardening guru Pat Sutton is giving a series of four Gardening for Wildlife Workshops at the Nature Center of Cape May.

In the series, Sutton will show property owners how to enhance their backyard landscaping to welcome wildlife through the use of native plants and wildlife-friendly practices.

The workshops run 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays.

Entertainment for children will include pumpkin and face painting.

The Greater Wildwood Chamber of Commerce will present the fourth annual Seafood and Music Festival 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8 on Atlantic Avenue between Wildwood and Schellenger avenues.

Highlights of the festival include a street fair with food and craft vendors, a pie-eating contest, a clam chowder cookoff and music on two stages featuring Frank Bey and the Swing City Blues Band, the Rocktologists, the Good Tymes Band, Large Flower Heads and Bandstand.

A surfer at sunset in the fall may seem like a metaphor for the end of summer, but it was really just a good ride.

Perfection is unlikely, but we can keep trying

Apparently, I’ve forgotten how to surf.

It’s a very frustrating situation. I got up early, put on a soggy wetsuit in the cold, hit the beach and floated around for an hour, drifting south faster than I could paddle north.

I could see waves and I could remember the process involved in catching them – I just couldn’t seem to carry it out.

It’s funny how rarely things turn out the way you expect.

That’s life.

We start out with an idea, maybe we daydream about the best possible results, and sometimes that’s all we manage. Sometimes we act on those ideas and try to work out a plan to bring that ideal to reality. Then we get to work.

Photograph by Christine Peck.

The Cape May Artists Cooperative will feature the work of members Lisa Bernstein, Phil Dietz and Christine Peck Oct. 7-Nov. 6 in the co-op gallery at the West End Garage, 484 Perry St., Cape May.

Bernstein, a West Cape May fiber artist, said she looks for ways to work toward sustainability in her life and art – reducing, reusing, refusing and recycling where she can.

She said she is inspired by the Native American wisdom that tells us we don't own our world and its precious treasures; we borrow them from our children and need to think not only of them, but seven generations beyond.

Bernstein takes unwanted sweaters and turns them into useful objects such as hats, pillows and messenger bags, crafting them with a touch of whimsy.

Nino’s has reopened in the same spot it occupied for 10 years, from 1994-2004.

When Nino’s Family Restaurant opened Tuesday at 16 S. Main Street in Cape May Court House, the family was coming home after a long absence.

Nino’s occupied the same spot from 1994 to 2004, when the operation moved to 201 W. Walnut St. in North Wildwood, into what used to be the Triangle Restaurant.

But times changed, people changed and the economy changed – and the family has found that Cape May Court House fits the bill once again.

West Cape May will honor the lowly lima bean with a festival 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at Wilbraham Park.

Quirky Lima Bean Festival returns to Wilbraham Park

In what has become an annual tradition, West Cape May will celebrate its farming heritage with the Lima Bean Festival Saturday, Oct. 8 in Wilbraham Park.

From 9 a.m.-5 p.m. the park will be filled with vendors selling a selection of food, crafts and products that spring from the lowly legume.

Juried arts and crafts, local merchandise, food, clothing, antiques and collectibles will be for sale – as long as the wares are somehow related to the lima bean. No flea market merchandise is permitted.

Tom Iwanicki and friends, fishing aboard the Allure, weighed in a huge 66-pound wahoo caught on the chunk offshore. The fish was weighed in at Avalon Hodge Podge.

The big cool-down moved in last Sunday morning with air temperatures settling in around the mid-50s. It may feel like fall, but the fishing continues to be hot. The normal fish species for this time of the year are settling in – and they are plentiful, including small blues, tautog and stripers. Some areas are more active than others, but everyone is catching something.

Tautog season will continue with one fish per angler per day through Nov. 15 followed by a two-fish limit beginning Nov. 16. Bluefish minimums remains at 15 per day at no minimum size, and one weakfish at a minimum of 13 inches is still in effect throughout the rest of the year. Two stripers are permitted per day at a minimum of 28 inches per fish.

Brennan Marine in Somers Point reported an influx of small bluefish in the back bays and said great tautog action continues. Stripers have been hitting the poles at night, and kingfish have been aggressive along the surf in the Ocean City area. They are also being caught in increasing numbers.

Dogfish Head Brewing Company limited release beers will be paired with a five-course dinner at Cabanas Oct. 20.

Cabanas Beach Bar and Grill on Beach Avenue in Cape May will host its inaugural craft beer dinner Oct. 20 – a five-course meal paired with beer from Dogfish Head Brewing Company.

The dinner was the next step in the bar’s growing craft beer program, said general manager George Kelly.

Kelly said the members of his staff are self-proclaimed beer geeks.

“It started as a casual conversation about how it would be cool to host a beer dinner, and then it took off from there,” he said.

Linda Camp and Pat Votwinick of Marcellina boutique in Wildwood Crest.

The Fall Thunder in the Sand Pro/Am Motocross Races start 10 a.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday.

Speed will be the order of the day when New Jersey Thunder Motorsports brings motocross to the beaches Friday through Sunday, Oct. 7-9 for the Wildwoods annual Fall Thunder in the Sand Pro/Am Motocross Races.

The three-day competition will be held on the beach at Lincoln Avenue in Wildwood, where the sand will be transformed into a custom course full of hairpin turns and huge jumps ensuring nonstop action.

The event will feature both American Mototcyclist Association-sanctioned and pro-am motocross races, with beginners to professional racers competing for chances to win cash prizes. It is part of the Thunder in the Sand Atcomx Motocross Series, which goes back and forth between Atco and Wildwood.

Pumpkins are the surest sign of fall, of Halloween, of Thanksgiving – the whole autumnal season. And they’re far more versatile than you might think. Use your gourd and try these traditional and innovative ways to put fall pumpkins to work.

1. Carve a jack-o-lantern. This old classic was made new by patterns and carving tools that let you achieve monstrously good results.

2. Hollow out your gourd and use it as a vase, filling it with mums, cattails and fall foliage.

The Cape May Wine festival will offer wine along the water Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8 and 9 at the Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal.

More than 20 wineries will be offering some 200 wines for sampling at the Cape May Wine Festival Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8 and 9.

The festival, the largest in southern New Jersey, takes place noon-5 p.m. at the Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal, where festival goers can enjoy the autumn weather and sample award-winning wines from New Jersey, listen to live music, shop craft tables and visit the Kids Zone, which has activities especially for younger attendees.

Live music will be provided Saturday by the band Jingo Jive and Sunday by Gashouse Gorillas.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (Harper). This superb novel by the author of “Bel Canto” and “The Patron Saint of Liars” tells the story of Marina Singh, a pharmaceutical researcher who reluctantly accepts a terrible mission: to travel from Minnesota where she lives and works to the jungles of Brazil. There she must discover how a beloved colleague died, hopefully reclaim his body, and confront a fabled, mysterious scientist who is supposedly developing a new wonder drug among the tribes of the Amazon. Marina has a personal reason for dreading this task: She was once a student of Dr. Annick Swenson – demanding, demeaning, and determinedly regardless of the human side of her work. In the strange and occasionally terrifying world of the jungle, Marina must face and vanquish her fears or suffer grave consequences. The book is intelligent and thrillingly detailed, and the ending is simply miraculous.

‘Moneyball’ is consistently smart and funny

In 2002, the Oakland A’s put together a winning baseball team with less than a third of the budget of the New York Yankees. In doing so, they defied all conventional logic and forever changed the way teams are put together.

“Moneyball” stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, former athlete-turned-general manager of the A’s. Disillusioned by the state of baseball, where the teams with the most money attract the best players, Beane is not only losing three star players, but knows his miniscule budget will assure that the A’s can’t compete with even mid-range teams. It’s the same system that recruited Beane out of high school, practically guaranteeing that he'd be a star. Having gone through it, he understands why the approach is flawed. He just doesn't know how to fix it.