Halfway to the car I realized I didn't have a house key. The spare key was on the mantle. Since the days have been so balmy lately, we've been opening and closing lots of windows around the house. The trick was to find one somebody had neglected to lock. We found one near the back of the house but it refused my daughter's best efforts to push it up and open.
Old windows can really be stubborn to open from the outside.
Hence, our struggle in the azalea bed. The window was too high to climb in anyway, without a ladder and somebody had borrowed that. We found another window that was more accessible but it had a tricky screen which took a little manuevering. We got the screen off and the window open. But there was the little matter of the large table sitting in front of the window.