Shot on a Nikon D5600
RAW mode, AF-P DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ISO 2800 f/14 1/160s
#photography 
Discussion
Cat, the pictures are lovely and I like your play with depth-of-field, but: your ISO 2800 is WAY TOO HIGH for the situation.
Keep in mind, your sensor's real sensitivity is probably around ISO 200; anything above that is just amplification, and with amplification also comes noise.
Now, your post-processing work does a great job of reducing that noise, but does so at the expense of sharpness and detail. You'd be better off not introducing the noise in the first place.
When shooting in clear daylight (like the pics above), consider keeping your ISO in the 200 range. Maybe go up to 400 in semi-shade, or on overcast days, or if your subject is moving so fast that you need to go high on the shutter speed. Your pictures will be sharper, your shadows deeper and your color gradients smoother.
I hope this helps :)
Thank you. Yeah, I’m still fighting with balancing the settings out. I need to go full manual at this point. I’ve been weaning into it with Aperture priority mode, and occasionally shutter speed priority mode.
It's easy when you know your stops.
Most people these days don't realize that, for example, for a fixed ISO, [1/250, f/8] is the same exposure point as [1/125, f/11], or [1/60, f/16] etc (this is what the thumb wheel on your Nikon does in P mode - it cycles through various equivalent shutter/f-stop pairs). Give one stop here, take one stop there, you end up in the same place exposure-wise - but different composition-wise.
It's such a beautifully unpredictable world, and yet so structured at the same time. Wish you best of luck in your explorations. :)