I bought dirt today.

Last night when I told my spouse I was going to buy dirt, she said that my ancestors would have been shocked. They were farmers. To them, dirt was something you got for free, from the ground.

I said, “Yeah, for them dirt grew on trees.” Of course, my spouse informed me that it was the other way around.

But today I went out and bought two big bags full of dirt, and hauled them up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. This is something my ancestors didn’t have to do. They had elevators. No, I’m kidding about the elevators. Their dirt was lying out there where it belonged, baking in the sunshine. My dirt is in plastic bags, sitting next to the balcony door where I’ll see it all the time, and hopefully will go out soon and put it in pots.

This is new to me. Long ago, I planned a garden, but then I had a baby instead and the garden was pretty much left to do its own thing. I never really got back to it, between raising a kid and working nine-to-five. After my son grew up, I moved away from the U.S. and switched to apartment living. In Venezuela, I had a tiny, wildly-wind-swept balcony right across from the Caribbean, and the only thing I could grow were ginger plants. In Ecuador, I didn’t have a balcony.

But now I’m living in Germany, where everybody has a garden. If they have a tiny space, they have tiny perfect gardens. And we have a beautiful wrap-around balcony, perfect for grilling wursts on long summer afternoons, and for watching the moon when the sun finally sets. Our landlady left lots of living things on the balcony, but in the two years since we moved here, they’ve all died except the pine tree. So it’s up to me. I must garden.

The truth is I have no idea what I’m doing. But I do have empty pots, lots of them, and now I have dirt. And the other day I bought a thyme plant. My friend Nancy demonstrated the way to pick it up out of its little plastic pot, as though I were grabbing a hank of hair, before putting it in some nice new dirt in a bigger pot. I said, “That won’t hurt it?” She assured me it wouldn’t.

Why does this feel important? I’m not going to start producing my own food, although I do hope to occasionally nibble on something I’ve grown. I bet that thyme plant wouldn’t mind. Maybe I’m just trying to propitiate the spirits of nature, in my own little way. Maybe I’m grounding myself, so that I’ll have solid footing throughout the next few months.

And we’ll all need solid footing, because the astrological picture is getting pretty dramatic, and it will keep sharpening through the summer. This won’t be as evident in May, however, because it’s an earthy month, with the sun, Mercury, Saturn, Pluto and the north node all going through earth signs. The earth signs are about practical, hands-on solutions to existing problems.

May will be a measured, deliberate month, as Mercury slows down and changes direction. Mercury spends the first three weeks of May moseying over a small slice of the zodiac, just the first six degrees of Taurus. It’s only during the last week of May that it starts to pick up speed. Everybody will get a lot more alert, as actions and consequences follow each other more swiftly.

But even with all this solid earth energy, and with Mercury stopping to catch its breath, there’s still plenty of underlying tension. Saturn and Uranus are still ranged across from each other, in a face-off between the old and the new. Saturn insists on structure and organization, and generally upholds the status quo, while Uranus agitates for something new.

Neither of these planets is the villain of the piece. At its worst, Saturn is rigid and punitive, but at its best, it fosters responsibility and commitment, and pays attention to the lessons of time. At its worst, Uranus just generates noise and chaos without doing much of anything useful, but at its best, it’s creative and liberating. And we’ll see all four of these faces through the month.

April was a tense and tumultuous month, and the Saturn/Uranus opposition had a lot to do with the rebellions that broke out – in Thailand and in Kyrgyzstan – and with the sudden chaos of earthquakes and volcanoes. There were also shocking accidents, as when a plane crash wiped out the top echelon of the Polish government, including the prime minister.

And in a sweeping case of buck-passing, the Vatican Secretary of State said that if there were no homosexuals, there wouldn’t be any pedophiles. I say, fine, let the gay community take responsibility for fixing what’s wrong with the Catholic Church. I’m sure we could make it lots better.

President Obama keeps plugging along. In April, he moved towards reducing nuclear arms. And he unveiled a passenger rail plan, and signed a memo requiring that gay people be allowed to visit their hospitalized partners. These are all Saturnine measures – simplifying, streamlining, finding practical structures, and promoting our mutual responsibilities for each other.

As April ends, there are still people agitating, but they are thinking about getting back to their own homes, their own gardens. The new moon on May 13 does not yield much, however, so I don’t think the issues will be resolved quite yet. They’ll just be put on hold, as a more measured pace prevails.

The new moon brings a fixed square between the sun/moon in Taurus and Mars in Leo. This can mean a stand-off around issues of leadership, military action, and economic direction. There’s an underlying violence here, but the conservatism of Taurus keeps the Saturn side of the equation stronger.

However, as May goes on, the forces of rebellion grow, as Jupiter moves closer and closer to Uranus. It’s as though the town millionaire decided to use his fortune to fund the rebel movement. Since it occurs in Pisces, there may be a bit of unreality about these ventures. Like a virus, strange political stances spread, and when there’s a lot of good camaraderie going down, people don’t always stop to question their beliefs.

It’s a strange world I’ve come to, when most anti-government activists appear to be racists. I’ve got to keep reminding myself that the politics of freedom is much older and much more solidly based than its most obvious current manifestations. There are things that need to shed their current form, and to become something different. We are on the road to positive change in so many ways, but peace still seems like a miracle away.

How do we plant it? How do we find a way to let it grow? This is new to us all.

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