You are too hard on yourself Ray, there is nothing wrong with what you have done here.
The sky is not important here so that isn't really an issue. If you want an idea for improving it, I would look at the various tiers that are showing as the spurs of the hills go back. I've done a very quick pimp just to show you what I mean. I stress this is not a carefully done adjustment, just a few minutes to give you the principle.
Each of the four main layers now gets progressively faded to give a better sense of death. I copied the layer (Ctrl+J) and used a layer mask to adjust only the area I wanted. I then copied that layer (this also copies the layer mask) and added to the layer mask so that only the next tier was affected and lightened it, and same again for the last tier I used.
Hope you can see what I mean.
Cheers,
Rob
