Well, it was shot from a car on the skyline drive in Virgina, so I am about 200 miles from the blossoms now
This is what it is. This was a case of 'there are these things appearing from time to time, can I make something of them?' and this was the solution I devised. Softness is not a problem for me here, deliberate softness was (essentially) the solution that presented itself. The image is already heavily burned and dodged and frankly painted on.
Any further work I do will probably break up the bright region upper left to reduce the sensation of lens flare, and probably try to define the "blobs" a bit further, to make them look less like optical artifacts and more like the translucent objects they actually are.
Please note that the "shot from a car etc" is not intended as an excuse. I make no excuses. Either the result is worth showing, or it's not. This one, I feel, has some potential. If it fails, it fails; if it succeeds it does not succeed through some sort of "difficult shot affirmative action" program.