Help! Lest they take me to their Queen

It's never been any big secret to me that mosquitoes find me to be delicious. From the time I was a kid if I wasn't in the house I needed to be hosed down with chemicals in order to keep from looking like I had a case of the measles on top of a bad case of the chicken pox. If they had their way they'd find a way to tie me to a tree and feed on me relentlessly. No joke.

Growing up I lived in the middle of some state land right across from a swamp. Mosquitoes kind of came with the territory. Also, at the time of my growing up, organic and homegrown wasn't all the rage and West Nile was unheard of so it was a very different period of my life. A summer night was spent swatting the occasional bug away if I sprayed myself down or a dozen (or two or three) if I hadn't.

Flash forward to current day. Mosquitoes still find me delicious, as evidenced during a three day camping trip last year where I bathed in Deep woods off and was still the recipient of nearly 50 bites. I've noticed that mosquitoes on an island are a bit on the tenacious and mean side though and will bite through your clothing and are typically none too bothered by smoke, candle or fire the way your average pest is. It's one of the inconveniences that comes with this sort of trip, sort of like peeing in the bushes. It's one more thing to remove you from the state of being comfy at home.

So imagine my annoyance when over the weekend the bastards tried to carry me off to their mosquito kingdom to make me their blood concubine. All I wanted to do was weed my garden and finish turning the last two beds (which I'll be starting from baby plants and not seeds since it's so late in the season) but no, they couldn't let me be, giving me 30+ bites. To add to my annoyance, I've begun to weed chemicals out of my life wherever possible, including my skin and hair care routines so I really wasn't fond of the thought of hosing myself down with chemicals just to weed the garden. I decided I'd wait until noon the following day when the sun would be shining directly on the garden, it would be massively hot and the mosquitoes would be lurking in their lairs waiting for it to cool down. Sure, I'd be covered in sunscreen and hotter then hell, but that beats out on the lumps, itching and possible diseases that mosquitoes bring right?

Not so much. In 20 minutes I had been bitten 12 times. I broke down and sprayed myself with the bug spray and got back to weeding with no more bites. After I was done, I decided to try to hunt down some home-made or at least organic alternatives and went to the local health shop yesterday to shop. I came home with something that in all honesty, should have worked as it's a high concentration of citronella blended with lemongrass and cedar in a carrier (which I'm under the impression bugs dislike), but nope. I went outside just now after spraying myself down and received quite a few bites in the 15 minutes I was out there before running like hell to the safety of my house. Awesome.

So, I'm sort of at my wits end here. I live in the suburbs with no lakes or swamps nearby. I keep my yard cut, weeds plucked and hedges trimmed. There's no standing water that I can find; no old tires, planters, etc where it can hide. I have a fairly high intake of garlic and really don't want to be wearing long pants and long sleeves since it's already humid and hot and it's only the first day of June.

So my question to you all is, can you think of anything else to try before I give up and just go back to spraying myself with the chemical stuff? How do all of you delicious blood meals avoid getting bitten? Because honestly, the diseases the mosquitoes carry make me think that if it's my only option it's one worth following through on.