One thing that I love about Olive trees is that they even look good when dead (or apparently dead). The death of an olive tree is hard to achieve - you need to uproot it to be sure of success. I expect that if I look closer at the stumps above I'll see little shoots at the base of them. Certainly the flat cut stump in our garden (the tree must have been a huge ancient one before it was cut down) has produced three shoots over the last few years - one of which, after some 5 years of growth, is now a good 2m (6' 6) high. This youngest olive tree has featured in the past on this blog. Remember you can click on the image to see it larger and you can see the previous entry in the series as well.