saplings in a chequered landscape

The chequered landscape, in the background, is another image rescued from the files. The sky was masked using a shape made from a fractal brush and then the hue was adjusted. The river was several layers of another fractal brush. The saplings were made from one of the PSE 'shapes' and then copied, rotated and shaded with a black to clear gradient. If you don't do Photoshop then this is all gobbledygook, so please ignore my ramblings - it's a bit early in the morning to be too coherent!