Hines,
I can relate quite well. I also bought some of Nicoles this spring. You have to remember that her soil and growing conditions are completely different from yours. Also she is taking pictures of flowers from establised clumps, yours are new and have traveled around the country bare root in a hot closed in box.
I also got Smooth Talker, although it was gorgeous, it did not look exactly like her picture for me. When people edit their pictures they make changes to them, not that I'm accusing Nicole of doing this, but cameras all take different looking pictures. You can try and edit them to look just like the flower you saw in the garden, but lots of times, this is impossible to achieve. Also as pointed out in the above post, the time of day the picture is taken has a lot to do with how it looks on the monitor. I take all my pictures early morning to get the most accurate pictures in the shade. You can look at the same flower in the afternoon and it looks totally different.
Here is Smooth Talker as it looked for me. No it didn't look exactly like hers, but it was new here and planted in potting soil not garden soil.
I also got Follow Your Fancy, but it declined on me and finally died. She replaced it for me and the new one is fine.
Dot
Smooth Talker
