Smokey Mountains

I was outside one morning and thought this bush looked pretty.
Unfortunatley, when I got home to review some photos, I found that for the first time I thought the bokeh from my canon 50 f1.8 was 'harsh'. In this case the background in the upper left corner. The only editing I did was a rescale, a USM, and a little selective blurring of the 'harsh' bokeh. Any C&C welcome.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5171/...ccd8f401_b.jpg

I see that happening in some of my shots when the background is real "twiggy" with a pretty wide variety of similar colors. It's a thought.

Is there a better way to 'soften' the bokeh there? Perhaps a guassian blur with a selective mask so as to keep the foreground unchanged?