A day at the beach is no picnic when you go with Clean Ocean Action. At least you’ll be doing good. The group is having its 23rd annual Spring Beach Sweeps Saturday 9 at a.m. Volunteers will clean some 50 beaches up and down the Shore. Look here for the full list.

More enviro-news on this weekend after Earth Day: PSEG is sponsoring the three-day Global Green Expo at Liberty State Park in Jersey City starting tomorrow. Activists, authors, scientists and inventors of green products bring their ideas about taking environmentally responsible action.

The Scarlet, too, is going green Saturday at Rutgers’ 90th annual Ag Field Day, on the Cook Campus. There will be tours of Rutgers Gardens and Helyar Woods; Cook academic units like the Department of Entomology and the Equine Science Center will show off their work.

Nearby at Douglass, stop by the 33d annual New Jersey Folk Festival, also Saturday. This year’s theme is German-American heritage, and there will be German music and food. But hey, this is culinarily diverse Enn-Jay, so munchies also include pizza, gyros, Pad Thai, and rice and beans.

The weekend brings hyper-local festivities in towns across the state. Down the Shore, Ocean City is proud to host its Doo Dah Parade, with some 500 basset hounds marching (do dogs march?) on the boardwalk Saturday starting at noon.

A little further south it’s the Cape May Spring Festival, sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts. This is a biggie: It starts Friday and runs until Sunday, May 4, with Victorian tours, food and wine events, murder-mystery dinners, antiques and craft shows.

Meanwhile, in “true” South Jersey (the Shore is the Shore, no matter how far south), the Salem County Historical Society is running its 2008 tour of historic homes dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Saturday itinerary includes the 1720 Kiger House, Salem’s first Catholic church.

Also in South Jersey, merchants in Mullica Hill are having their Spring Open House Arts & Music Festival on Saturday. Musicians and craft artisans will be on Main Street, known for its many antique and gift shops.

Another trendy Jersey town with a big antiques and arts scene, Lambertville, is having its 27th annual Shad Festival. It’s in part a seafood celebration of the Delaware River’s catch, yes. But it’s also an arts show. Some pretty good restaurants in town, too.

Everywhere you go the Garden State is in bloom. Enjoy the green theme… and give those beaches a clean sweep. We’ll be heading down the Shore soon!