Chopping

Shot one is exposed for the sky, but underexposes the poppies
Shot two overexposes the sky, but does the poppies OK

This is the chopped image.

I did quite a lot of fiddling with burn and dodge, on a 50% grey overlay.

I also played with shadows and highlights, and colour balance and saturation.

This is the final result of a blended image. First time I've tried it, not entirely happy with it, but that's more about not having the tripod and not having a particularly good image to start with.

It definitely looks better than the original!!