Grab a handful of soil. . . . . What does it look like? What does it feel like? It may seem rather ordinary; but look closer. What are you holding in your hand? A mixture of minerals and air with some water and organic matter? Is that all? No. There's so much more to soil than that. For a soil scientist in general and a soil microbiologist in particular the soil is a living thing, a mixture of living and dead organisms in an organic/mineral matrix. Not every organism is identical, or as abundant, or does the same things, or is active at the same time. Some you can see and some you can't, although we have various tools we can use to prove even the microscopic ones exist. Soil is the most immensely complicated and diverse ecosystem on the planet. And as the quotations above suggest, its care and feeding are vital to agriculture and vital to life.