The Where I Live series aims to showcase our diverse city and region by spotlighting its many vibrant neighborhoods. Each week a local resident invites us over and lets us in on what makes their neighborhood special. Have we been to your neighborhood yet? Get in touch to share your story. If your story is selected and published, you will receive a $250 stipend.
Having spent 32 years waking up to the oaks on Country Club Prado in Coral Gables, Florida, I immediately was drawn to Long Bow Road in old Shavano Park four and a half years ago. Like Coral Gables, Shavano Park is an official Tree City and is one of only a few municipalities in the greater San Antonio metroplex with that designation.
In keeping with the greater City of San Antonio unique designation “Tree City of the World,” Shavano Park is also a certified wildlife habitat community with a native pollinator garden open to all in front of City Hall.
With a “pet parade” of three rescue cats, two Shetland sheepdogs, an aquarium filled with African cichlid “wet pets” and a very vocal yellow nape Amazon parrot, my husband and I were looking for a forever home like where we grew up in the rural South.
Although my husband Dr. Ken Davis’ medical career took him from the cotton fields of Cleveland, Mississippi to Boston, Tupelo, Mississippi and then San Antonio, Ken always loved knowing that his neighbors could also include deer and hummingbirds.
As a career technology executive at IBM and then an executive staff member and lecturer at the University of Miami, my bayou roots from Alexandria, Louisiana, coupled with my love for “dirt and critters,” followed me from New York to Miami to here.
With a city slogan of “City Living with Country Charm,” Shavano Park opens its front lawn and pavilion to past, present and future friends and families at five annual events starting in April with Arbor/Earth Day.
It was at one of these events, the Independence Day picnic of 2021, that I met members of the Shavano Park Women’s (SPW) Club, and I was encouraged to join and get involved. With no friends and no family other than my husband here, this group opened their arms to me, a stranger to Texas who still had Florida sand in her shoes.
With a focus on welcoming new neighbors, the SPW group pre-dates the city’s founding in 1956 and dates to 1952. By promoting philanthropic, educational and community initiatives to benefit the city’s residents, the group serves as a welcome to the city.
As a recent retiree looking to “rewire” and fit in, I joined SPW immediately and became an active member shortly after my first Shavano Park Independence Day celebration that summer of 2021. Inspired by other SPW members who were community leaders, I learned about other family-friendly events and opportunities to get involved in, as well as what our city and immediate neighborhoods had to offer.
They helped me acknowledge my lack of understanding of the South Texas ecosystem, including my own yard. With their help, I was fortunate to be appointed to the Shavano Park’s Citizen’s Tree Committee that hosts the annual Arbor/Earth Day event. That appointment introduced me to our tree tunnels and green belts and allowed me to better appreciate why our city slogan is “City Living with Country Charm.”
With our own yard filled with oaks and other native plants that neither of us were familiar with, I invested time in learning and certifying as both a Bexar County Master Gardener and Alamo Area Master Naturalist. These two designations allowed me to pursue my passion for volunteerism and education, including helping 28 Girl Scouts to use the city pollinator garden to earn a gardening badge.
As we begin our fifth year in Shavano Park and the newly expanded NW Military Highway and North Loop 1604, we look forward to better knowing our new hometown without construction. With street names such as Bikeway Lane, Shavano Park offers an active lifestyle with only a 30-minute drive to the downtown River Walk and Centro San Antonio.
Although we can easily travel to the San Antonio Airport in 20 minutes, we are only minutes away from restaurants ranging from Ukrainian to Chinese cuisine on NW Military Highway. Our immediate travel corridors are filled with coffee shops, bakeries, schools, churches and synagogues, grocery stores, pharmacies and medical care from hospitals to local practices, allowing us to avoid traffic congestion and daily commutes for everyday needs.
With the city’s own local fire and police, bike and walking trails and everything young families, working professionals and those “rewiring” (like we are) close by, Shavano Park affords its residents an inclusive community where we can all fit in.
Most importantly, it affords Ken and me, along with the pet parade, to celebrate nature with both our two- and four-legged neighbors under our own oak trees while listening to the early sounds of cardinals, mourning doves and an occasional visiting owl or hawk.
