Forcing Flowering Shrubs

Yesterday we had a warming trend and 38F never felt so good.  With three feet of snow on the ground, rain came and added a crunchy crust to the snow in the yard and sheer ice to the walkway and driveway.  The snow has melted from the glass of the office greenhouse and today's clear skies are showing.  With cabin fever at an all time high I decided to take a walk into the garden to snip some branches of the Prunus x 'Hally Jolivette'.  This is a great little tree or a shrub.  The shape will depend on your pruning techniques. It starts to flower in April and it flowers over a long period of time.  This shrub will bloom for a good three weeks unless there is unseasonably hot weather to force the blooms a bit faster.  I have never brought in any branches to force before today.  The branching habit is dense and the need for a few blooms in the house is worth the sacrifice of some of the spring blooms.   Getting to the shrub was not so easy as the crust of snow holds a fifty pound puppy but that is about it.  With the snow knee deep it was slow going to get to the cherry.  You can see it here and in the background, planted just next to the cherry is a staghorn sumac, Rhus typina 'Tiger Eyes'.  I was concentrating so hard on getting the feet lifted and plunked back into the deep snow that I didn't notice Cooper doing his own bit of pruning.  Puppies will eat anything.   Ragged tears are not an ideal method of pruning and puppy teeth not the preferred tool. The sumac is interesting in winter as it has very coarse branching and furry stems.  It is not, however, a plant for forcing.  Back to the cherry. I chose the stems of the cherry for cutting and forcing based on pruning principles. It is important to note that the stems should have nice, fat flower buds.  Some stems just have leaf buds and on this cherry the leaf buds are a bit more pointed and at the very top of the new growth.  First picked were stems that were crossing or rubbing on other stems.  Next, I went into the center of the shrub and cut out a few stems in order to open up the canopy of the shrub and increase light and air circulation.  I trudged back to the kitchen, recut the stems and put them in water.   I now have a vase of sticks on the table but I have high hopes of flowers in the next week.  Have you clipped anything for forcing indoors?  I would have clipped forsythia but mine is buried still.  Cherry will have to do.