Tony, Since there's no Great Wall of Ontario you're at a distinct disadvantage relative to Ognita's environment. Nonetheless I see what you were trying to do. One immediate problem. though: When you post files larger than about 500K your viewers don't gain anything in resolution, but they do lose time waiting for the files to download. It helps if you can keep the size down. 72ppi monitors just can't show all those bytes, but you still have to download them.
The pictures themselves are good tries. I like the composition in the first one. The pyramid formed by the trees, with the fence at its focus is a classic kind of composition that goes back at least as far as Giotto. The only problem I see with that one is that the area behind the fence appears blown out. You might want to bring in a bit more detail in that area. My problem with the second picture is that there's nothing like the fence to catch my attention. The old trees are interesting in themselves, but they don't make an interesting picture -- at least not for me.
Keep at it. These are a good start.
EDIT: Mike posted while I was composing my answer. I should add that I agree with him. There's a softness in both pictures that I passed over since I'm always a bit reluctant to make sharpness determinations on a 72ppi monitor -- unless the picture clearly is out of focus or there's obvious camera motion. On the other hand, on my monitor at least even though the softness is there, there's also some indication of over-sharpening. How can both things be true at the same time? No problem at all. To see the effect, try shooting a picture slightly out of focus and then crank up the sharpening to overcome the problem. Within reason you can do it, but the effect is there for those with eyes to see. What's almost impossible to do is recover a soft picture by sharpening when the picture has high-frequency elements such as leaves.
