Spiders and things of late summer

The fire has left all kinds of burnt bizarre things behind, including this tree where a branch has gone and the inside is now hollow. Home for a possum or owl perhaps?

Not sure if this is a native geranium or pelargonium.

 If you saw us walking along, waving a large stick in front of us, you might think us mad. But this is what we are trying to avoid - walking into the web of one of these. They are St Andrews spiders (I think) and are enjoying catching all the grasshoppers bounding around at the moment.
(Note: thanks to Snail, I now know this is a golden orb weaver - see comments.)

 Same web but this spider was off to one side. Is this its back, or an egg sac?

Lots of kookaburras around at the moment. Two youngsters keeping their eyes on things.

Late December - flowers aplenty

 The array and numbers of wildflowers this spring and summer continues to astound me. Where in the past there have been small clumps of things like Blue Pincushions (above) and Vanilla-lilies, now there are swathes of them - in several places the Vanilla-lilies are in patches metres square. In past years I've had to go searching for them. Yes, the bushfire probably cleared the way for them to sprout but I suspect the huge amount of rain over winter and spring had a lot more to do with it.

 Chocolate-lily - not very many of these. (The hyphen is used in my reference book - Wildflowers of the Brisbane Ranges - Clive and Merle Trigg.)

 These fringe-lilies are my favourites, mainly because of their colour and, well, the fringing!

 I never get tired of trying to capture the perfect image of a vanilla-lily. In fact this flower is about the size of my smallest finger nail.

While slogging my way around attacking weeds, I've found some plants I've never seen before like this Everlasting.
I've been waging a huge battle over the past three months against a massive weed invasion (also an after effect of the bushfire). It seems that the bare ground was a big opportunity for the weeds to move in, especially because neither of my neighbours with paddocks seem to do any weed control. First it was a species of huge green thistle (not scotch thistle) with thick hollow stems, and now it's dandelions. Massive clumps of the things that are now starting to go to seed, so it's a fight to see who wins. I think they are! But I can't afford to give up.