Dealing with near-field out of focus objects

[blue dog]

This is a really unique self portrait of my grandfather. It might be excellent if it wasn't for all the visual confusion caused by all those near field leaves etc that are too close to be in focus. I thought that colorizing it would really help the viewer resolve the clutter. Here is the best I could do in 6 hours and I am wondering if anyone here might approach it differently.

What I did..The first attempt I meerly made a mask of all the near-field stuff in order to separate it from the background stuff. Then there are separate masks for the ground, him & his stuff, the water, trees and sky. The result was OK, but I had been really sloopy and had to do it over.

I got this idea to break the near-field stuff into different masks representing different levels of 'solidity'. So the very faint stuff was masked using 20%. Then I took the next level, less faint stuff, and masked it using 45%, then 70% then 100%. Right now I am colorizing on a RGB fill layer. All the near-field stuff is done with the same color which might not be best.

I think I met my objective and I am rather pleased with the end result. Any other suggestions?