An exercise in post processing

I'm very new to PP. Up until very recently it was rawshooter, move the bars for exposure, contrast and saturations then covert to jpeg. Been starting to get into using photoshop a bit, but mostly cleaning up dust bunnies and the like. This is the first time I've properly tinkered with anything using layers, though it's basic. Thought I'd thow it up here to see what people think.
Here is the out of cam image, no corrections at all. Its flat, the sky is washed out and the tree is too dark. There is also a blob in the middle of the paddock and on the tree at the second branch up on the right, these are from a dirty lens I think. Lesson learned, but let's just ignore them for the purpose of this exercise.
The adjusted shot. I altered exposure a tad before importing to photoshop. Then tweaked the curves in one layer, added some brightness in another layer as well. Tinkered with some dodging/burning in the clouds but didn't get anything nice so abandoned it. I'm happy with the improvement, though the aforementioned blobs preclude it from being anything more than a technical study.
Any suggestions or comments on what I've done are welcome.
Here is the out of cam image, no corrections at all. Its flat, the sky is washed out and the tree is too dark. There is also a blob in the middle of the paddock and on the tree at the second branch up on the right, these are from a dirty lens I think. Lesson learned, but let's just ignore them for the purpose of this exercise.

The adjusted shot. I altered exposure a tad before importing to photoshop. Then tweaked the curves in one layer, added some brightness in another layer as well. Tinkered with some dodging/burning in the clouds but didn't get anything nice so abandoned it. I'm happy with the improvement, though the aforementioned blobs preclude it from being anything more than a technical study.

Any suggestions or comments on what I've done are welcome.