Photoshop advice.

I like this image for a number of reasons, but the out of focus grasses on the left of the frame are killing it for me. It looks like a fog or something. Short of cropping all of it off(I can't afford that many pixels) any simple ideas on how to minimize the effects?
Canon 10D, 1-400mm IS, out of the car window, slight crop
Near Klamath Falls

i tried some contrast enhancement with unsharp mask and it got it close. at this image size it worked with a % of around 60-90 and set the radius at 250. then you can use the same mask to correct the color cast of the grasses. you could also try just regular contrast or curves, but you might clip your highlights and shadows.

here's my result, in about 3 min, so it could be done better

http://medina-photo.com/images/owl.jpg

um here's the psd if you want to see more

http://medina-photo.com/images/owl.jpg

Dan, may I make a suggestion? Why not just add some blur, a targeted vignette and a color cast to turn day into night? Like so:

http://www.gototem.com/images/owl.jpg

Mearle

Mearle, that is very impressive - how did you go about doing that ?

It's all about using adjustment layers for each effect and "painting" in the amount of blur, hue/saturation and color balance that you want.

taking Mearle's idea a step further, consider creating a horizontally oriented oval vignette with the owl at the right side of the oval, and without modifying the color cast, i.e. maintaining the daylight feel.

Thanks for taking the time, both Michael and Mearle. Michael, it never even occured to me to try your approach. I made a quick attempt at it(above)....and when time permits will hopefully perfect it. Mearle, I'm not much into "photo art", but your results are way cool!
This is the full frame version.