Blur?

Whilst at Karaka I took some shots of the weeds backlit by the sunlight.  I really liked the halo effect around the stems and the way the little hairs were illuminated.  I did not, however, manage to get a pleasing exposure with just the one image.  I could see the effect I was after, but the light on the weeds wasn't just right.

Three exposures of the weeds and an HDR blend led to the next image which introduced more depth and colour to the weed flowers, but introduced some rather disturbing bokeh in the background.  If you look at the first image you can make out some unpleasant circular hightlights, but these are amplified in the HDR process as is seen in the second image.

Final step was to add a bit of Gaussian blur to the background to enhance the blur.  This is what you see in the final image in this post.

So, after all this effort, was it worth it?  Perhaps not!  The first image looks pretty good really doesn't it?  What do you think?  Any preference or suggestions?