I’ll admit, first off, I’m not proud of the joke. I think it’s funny, but that may just be my sense of humor and regardless it’s definitely not something I would consider “A” material.
That out of the way, I really like how this one turned out. First, the composition worked really well. The tree line is pretty abrupt, but it would have been distracting had it gone beyond the word balloon. The balloon needed space to command to show it was carrying weight.
Also, I used space to hint at some other things. The woman is up on the deck, an ordered, man-built structure. The guy is out there running a wood chipper with trees to his back, brush at his side and chips in front. I tried to convey a progression of order and comfort from the woods at the upper right and the guy’s work clothes to the structure of the deck and the everyday clothes of the woman.
Finally, I really played with brushes today. I tried to do cool stuff with the trees, and got some neat texture with a stipple-style brush. The big surprise, though, was the grass. The secret is that it’s a brush that’s standard with Photoshop. Elements. 3. I imagine it’s still standard, but I wanted to make sure nobody was pulling their hair out running the latest version of CS4 if they happened to drop this one. You can’t miss it: The brush preview looks like grass. I used the one that was a single blade instead of a clump.