I usually have on jeans when I am outside, and try to come in after a couple of hours and take a shower. I keep a spray bottle with about 1/8 cup bleach and the rest water, spray it from toes to chest and then shower. But if I spend all day or all morning outside, it's too late. I did sulphur the yard and have a sock with sulphur dust to hit against my ankles. The problem is, I never INTEND to go into chiggar areas, in fact I never intend to start doing anything in the yard in the morning. I go out to feed the fish or drink some tea on the deck, or I pull a weed here or there, or decide to check the vegetable garden, and the next thing I know, it's 10:30 and I've been out there all morning.

The gnats you saw are likely fungus gnats as you suspect but they aren't your problem, they don't bite. The adults are completely harmless to anything at all, its their larvae in the potting medium that can present damage, by feeding on plants fine roots. Tricks for ridding your kitchen of fruit flies like the vinegar don't work for fungus gnats as you've seen. The adults have very brief little lives, its the breeding cycle you need to stop. Get some form of one of the BTi products (Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelenis). The subspecies is important, its specific to mosquito and gnat larvae. Gnatrol, Knock out Gnats, others, or in a pinch buy a package of mosquito dunks, drop a dunk in a container of water, let it sit overnight and use that water on your normal watering schedule for container plants, each time you water, for at least three weeks. It takes a while to break the breeding cycle but be patient, it will eliminate the gnats so be consistent. And the BTi is non toxic to you, your home, pets, birds, harmful only to mosquito and gnat larvae. I don't know what's biting you, it's not fungus gnats. Their larvae stay in the potting medium, either in the bag or your pots, and they aren't causing your itching either. Whether there was something else in that bag, or if the timing was completely coincidental, I couldn't say....

So I put a dish of water and some nuts out there with the half eaten tomato (hoping to distract the squirrel for today as I figure out a better approach) and in about 25 minutes birds have eaten all of the nuts and it looks like maybe some more of the tomato :-/ . I'm also seeing a couple of bird droppings on both tomato cages now that I think about it. It could be either squirrel or bird or both. The completely disappearing SunGolds with clean break stems are the only thing leading me to think that it would be a squirrel (or mouse? rat?). Seems like birds would have trouble being that neat about the SunGolds (left literally no trace rather than pecking).

Well, my doctor about had a fit when she first saw this mess but once I explained about the mosquito bites, she calmed down. I am being treated with a round of antibiotics because one area of the arm is presenting exactly like cellulitis.....swollen, red, hot, and painful. I have also been carrying around a lowgrade fever for two days. I am to continue with icing (helps a lot), benadryl cream, and antibiotic ointment. I've brought home a can of DEET, which I can spray on my clothes, though I cannot use it on my skin. My herbal repellent has been very effective, I just need to remember to use it. So....an allergic reaction to a large number of mosquito bites in one small area which may have precipitated an incident of cellulitis.