Get rid of sticks sticking up in my photo - tried just about everything?

[D R Smith]

Hi all.  I have a photo of a large tree on a cliff overlooking the city.  Knd of minimalistic.  To the left of the tree there are some individual sticks sticking up and I believe they are a distraction.  Behind them is part sky and part far away landscape.  I've tried the spot healing brush and that didn't work.  I've also tried the lasso and the content aware fill, it worked better but still left a kind of smear.  Can anyone please suggest a method for getting these sticks out of the photo cleanly.  By the way, I can't crop them out and I've tried cloning over them but the grey sky has too many different shades of clouds.

Thanks very much!

[Peru Bob]

Can you post the photo?

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Try a 2 step approach. First use the clone stamp, then as a second pass use healing.