I've adopted the processing workflow from Rawpedia's "Toolchain Pipeline" page. It helps me decide where to start, what tools to use next and where to finish up. I've now also at least looked at every tool available to me in RawTherapee, although using every single one to edit a photo is unnecessary. For this one it went something like:
>chromatic aberration correction (automatic)
>highlight recovery (using highlight compression)
>white balance (using the pipette)
>noise reduction (standard settings)
>impulse noise reduction (decreased the threshold until salt-and-pepper noise seemed less apparent at ~300% magnification)
>tone curve adjustments (spent a while here making adjustments to increase contrast without clipping too much out of the shadows or highlights and to increase saturation without clipping colors; made use of the respective clipping indicators; here's the final product: ibb (d o t) co/F4QZBwnX)
>LAB adjustments (used the L-channel curve to increase luminance through the midtones while keeping shadows and highlights anchored; used the chrominance based on luminance curve to increase saturation (chrominance?) through the midtones while keeping shadows and highlights, again, anchored)
that was it. thanks for reading.