Actually, when I first saw Christian's rendition, I failed to notice that he had cloned out a section of foliage in the middle, bottom edge. This is probably because he stated that he had cloned out a mountain part, and my attention was directed to which part, but I couldn't find it. Maybe too many glasses of wine.
As regards the cropping on the left, I tend to agree with Russ that the rising line of foliage on the left helps to frame the picture, and the temporary ending of the mountain range, clearly visible in the uncropped version, tends to add a sense of completion.
Cropping the image tends to create the impression one has captured only part of the scene and one gets a slight sense of incompletion.
I'm not sure about the foliage bottom centre.